PHANGS-ALMA: Arcsecond CO(2-1) Imaging of Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies
Abstract
We present PHANGS-ALMA, the first survey to map CO J=2-1 line emission at ~1" ~ 100pc spatial resolution from a representative sample of 90 nearby (d<~20 Mpc) galaxies that lie on or near the z=0 "main sequence" of star-forming galaxies. CO line emission traces the bulk distribution of molecular gas, which is the cold, star-forming phase of the interstellar medium. At the resolution achieved by PHANGS-ALMA, each beam reaches the size of a typical individual giant molecular cloud (GMC), so that these data can be used to measure the demographics, life-cycle, and physical state of molecular clouds across the population of galaxies where the majority of stars form at z=0. This paper describes the scientific motivation and background for the survey, sample selection, global properties of the targets, ALMA observations, and characteristics of the delivered ALMA data and derived data products. As the ALMA sample serves as the parent sample for parallel surveys with VLT/MUSE, HST, AstroSat, VLA, and other facilities, we include a detailed discussion of the sample selection. We detail the estimation of galaxy mass, size, star formation rate, CO luminosity, and other properties, compare estimates using different systems and provide best-estimate integrated measurements for each target. We also report the design and execution of the ALMA observations, which combine a Cycle~5 Large Program, a series of smaller programs, and archival observations. Finally, we present the first 1" resolution atlas of CO emission from nearby galaxies and describe the properties and contents of the first PHANGS-ALMA public data release.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2104.07739,
title = {PHANGS-ALMA: Arcsecond CO(2-1) Imaging of Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies},
author = {Adam K. Leroy and Eva Schinnerer and Annie Hughes and Erik Rosolowsky and Jérôme Pety and Andreas Schruba and Antonio Usero and Guillermo A. Blanc and Mélanie Chevance and Eric Emsellem and Christopher M. Faesi and Cinthya N. Herrera and Daizhong Liu and Sharon E. Meidt and Miguel Querejeta and Toshiki Saito and Karin M. Sandstrom and Jiayi Sun and Thomas G. Williams and Gagandeep S. Anand and Ashley T. Barnes and Erica A. Behrens and Francesco Belfiore and Samantha M. Benincasa and Ivana Bešlić and Frank Bigiel and Alberto D. Bolatto and Jakob S. den Brok and Yixian Cao and Rupali Chandar and Jérémy Chastenet and I-Da Chiang and Enrico Congiu and Daniel A. Dale and Sinan Deger and Cosima Eibensteiner and Oleg V. Egorov and Axel García-Rodríguez and Simon C. O. Glover and Kathryn Grasha and Jonathan D. Henshaw and I-Ting Ho and Amanda A. Kepley and Jaeyeon Kim and Ralf S. Klessen and Kathryn Kreckel and Eric W. Koch and J. M. Diederik Kruijssen and Kirsten L. Larson and Janice C. Lee and Laura A. Lopez and Josh Machado and Ness Mayker and Rebecca McElroy and Eric J. Murphy and Eve C. Ostriker and Hsi-An Pan and Ismael Pessa and Johannes Puschnig and Alessandro Razza and Patricia Sánchez-Blázquez and Francesco Santoro and Amy Sardone and Fabian Scheuermann and Kazimierz Sliwa and Mattia C. Sormani and Sophia K. Stuber and David A. Thilker and Jordan A. Turner and Dyas Utomo and Elizabeth J. Watkins and Bradley Whitmore},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.07739},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
76 pages, 33 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement series. Full resolution version and the image atlas to appear as a figure set in the published version can be found https://sites.google.com/view/phangs/publications . Data release coming soon to the ALMA archive and CADC temporarily available at http://phangs.org/data