The Herschel Reference Survey
Abstract
The Herschel Reference Survey is a guaranteed time Herschel key project and will be a benchmark study of dust in the nearby universe. The survey will complement a number of other Herschel key projects including large cosmological surveys that trace dust in the distant universe. We will use Herschel to produce images of a statistically-complete sample of 323 galaxies at 250, 350 and 500 micron. The sample is volume-limited, containing sources with distances between 15 and 25 Mpc and flux limits in the K-band to minimize the selection effects associated with dust and with young high-mass stars and to introduce a selection in stellar mass. The sample spans the whole range of morphological types (ellipticals to late-type spirals) and environments (from the field to the centre of the Virgo Cluster) and as such will be useful for other purposes than our own. We plan to use the survey to investigate (i) the dust content of galaxies as a function of Hubble type, stellar mass and environment, (ii) the connection between the dust content and composition and the other phases of the interstellar medium and (iii) the origin and evolution of dust in galaxies. In this paper, we describe the goals of the survey, the details of the sample and some of the auxiliary observing programs that we have started to collect complementary data. We also use the available multi-frequency data to carry out an analysis of the statistical properties of the sample.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1001.5136,
title = {The Herschel Reference Survey},
author = {A. Boselli and S. Eales and L. Cortese and G. Bendo and P. Chanial and V. Buat and J. Davies and R. Auld and E. Rigby and M. Baes and M. Barlow and J. Bock and M. Bradford and N. Castro-Rodriguez and S. Charlot and D. Clements and D. Cormier and E. Dwek and D. Elbaz and M. Galametz and F. Galliano and W. Gear and J. Glenn and H. Gomez and M. Griffin and S. Hony and K. Isaak and L. Levenson and N. Lu and S. Madden and B. O'Halloran and K. Okumura and S. Oliver and M. Page and P. Panuzzo and A. Papageorgiou and T. Parkin and I. Perez-Fournon and M. Pohlen and N. Rangwala and H. Roussel and A. Rykala and N. Sacchi and M. Sauvage and B. Schulz and M. Schirm and M. W. L. Smith and L. Spinoglio and J. Stevens and M. Symeonidis and M. Vaccari and L. Vigroux and C. Wilson and H. Wozniak and G. Wright and W. Zeilinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.5136},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication on PASP