Submillimeter Observations of Low Metallicity Galaxy NGC 4214

Results of submillimeter (450 micron and 850 micron) observations of a nearby dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 4214 with SCUBA on JCMT are presented. We aimed at examining the far-infrared to submillimeter spectral energy distribution (SED) and properties of dust thermal emission in a low metallicity environment by choosing NGC 4214 of which gas metallicity (log O/H + 12) is 8.34. We found that the SED is quite similar to those of IRAS bright galaxies sample (IBGS) which are local bright star-forming galaxies with metallicity comparable to the solar abundance. A dust temperature and an emissivity index for NGC 4214 obtained by a fitting to the single temperature greybody model are T_d = 35 \pm 0.8 K and beta = 1.4 \pm 0.1, respectively, which are typical values for IBGS. Compiling the previous studies on similar nearby dwarf irregular galaxies, we found that NGC 1569 shows similar results to those of NGC 4214, while NGC 4449 and IC 10 SE show different SEDs and low emissivity indices. There seems to be a variety of SEDs among metal poor dwarf irregular galaxies. We examined dependence on intensity of interstellar radiation field as well as two-temperature model, but the origin of the difference is not clear. Some mechanism(s) other than metallicity and interstellar radiation field must be responsible for controlling dust emission property.