  A new Monte-Carlo radiative-transfer code, Sunrise, is used to study the
effects of dust in N-body/hydrodynamic simulations of interacting galaxies.
Dust has a profound effect on the appearance of the simulated galaxies. At peak
luminosities, about 90% of the bolometric luminosity is absorbed, and the dust
obscuration scales with luminosity in such a way that the brightness at
UV/visual wavelengths remains roughly constant. A general relationship between
the fraction of energy absorbed and the ratio of bolometric luminosity to
baryonic mass is found. Comparing to observations, the simulations are found to
follow a relation similar to the observed IRX-Beta relation found by Meurer et
al (1999) when similar luminosity objects are considered. The
highest-luminosity simulated galaxies depart from this relation and occupy the
region where local (U)LIRGs are found. This agreement is contingent on the
presence of Milky-Way-like dust, while SMC-like dust results in far too red a
UV continuum slope to match observations. The simulations are used to study the
performance of star-formation indicators in the presence of dust. The
far-infrared luminosity is found to be reliable. In contrast, the H-alpha and
far-UV luminosity suffer severely from dust attenuation, and dust corrections
can only partially remedy the situation.
