SDSS-IV MaNGA IFS Galaxy Survey --- Survey Design, Execution, and Initial Data Quality
Abstract
The MaNGA Survey (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory) is one of three core programs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV. It is obtaining integral field spectroscopy (IFS) for 10K nearby galaxies at a spectral resolution of R~2000 from 3,622-10,354A. The design of the survey is driven by a set of science requirements on the precision of estimates of the following properties: star formation rate surface density, gas metallicity, stellar population age, metallicity, and abundance ratio, and their gradients; stellar and gas kinematics; and enclosed gravitational mass as a function of radius. We describe how these science requirements set the depth of the observations and dictate sample selection. The majority of targeted galaxies are selected to ensure uniform spatial coverage in units of effective radius (Re) while maximizing spatial resolution. About 2/3 of the sample is covered out to 1.5Re (Primary sample), and 1/3 of the sample is covered to 2.5Re (Secondary sample). We describe the survey execution with details that would be useful in the design of similar future surveys. We also present statistics on the achieved data quality, specifically, the point spread function, sampling uniformity, spectral resolution, sky subtraction, and flux calibration. For our Primary sample, the median r-band signal-to-noise ratio is ~73 per 1.4A pixel for spectra stacked between 1-1.5 Re. Measurements of various galaxy properties from the first year data show that we are meeting or exceeding the defined requirements for the majority of our science goals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1607.08613,
title = {SDSS-IV MaNGA IFS Galaxy Survey --- Survey Design, Execution, and Initial Data Quality},
author = {Renbin Yan and Kevin Bundy and David R. Law and Matthew A. Bershady and Brett Andrews and Brian Cherinka and Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic and Niv Drory and Nicholas MacDonald and José R. Sánchez-Gallego and Daniel Thomas and David A. Wake and Anne-Marie Weijmans and Kyle B. Westfall and Kai Zhang and Alfonso Aragón-Salamanca and Francesco Belfiore and Dmitry Bizyaev and Guillermo A. Blanc and Michael R. Blanton and Joel Brownstein and Michele Cappellari and Richard D'Souza and Eric Emsellem and Hai Fu and Patrick Gaulme and Mark T. Graham and Daniel Goddard and James E. Gunn and Paul Harding and Amy Jones and Karen Kinemuchi and Cheng Li and Hongyu Li and Roberto Maiolino and Shude Mao and Claudia Maraston and Karen Masters and Michael R. Merrifield and Daniel Oravetz and Kaike Pan and John K. Parejko and Sebastian F. Sanchez and David Schlegel and Audrey Simmons and Karun Thanjavur and Jeremy Tinker and Christy Tremonti and Remco van den Bosch and Zheng Zheng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.08613},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
34 pages, 31 figures. Accepted for publication in AJ; v2: updated affiliations and references