The PHANGS-MUSE survey -- Probing the chemo-dynamical evolution of disc galaxies
Abstract
We present the PHANGS-MUSE survey, a programme using the MUSE IFS at the ESO VLT to map 19 massive nearby (D < 20 Mpc) star-forming disc galaxies. The survey consists of 168 MUSE pointings (1'x1' each), a total of nearly 15 Million spectra, covering ~1.5 Million independent spectra. PHANGS-MUSE provides the first IFS view of star formation across different local environments (including galaxy centres, bars, spiral arms) in external galaxies at a median resolution of 50~pc, better than the mean inter-cloud distance in the ionised interstellar medium. This `cloud-scale' resolution allows detailed demographics and characterisations of HII regions and other ionised nebulae. PHANGS-MUSE further delivers a unique view on the associated gas and stellar kinematics, and provides constraints on the star formation history. The PHANGS-MUSE survey is complemented by dedicated ALMA CO(2-1) and multi-band HST observations, therefore allowing us to probe the key stages of the star formation process from molecular clouds to HII regions and star clusters. This paper describes the scientific motivation, sample selection, observational strategy, data reduction and analysis process of the PHANGS-MUSE survey. We present our bespoke automated data-reduction framework, which is built on the reduction recipes provided by ESO, but additionally allows for mosaicking and homogenisation of the point spread function. We further present a detailed quality assessment and a brief illustration of the potential scientific applications of the large set of PHANGS-MUSE data products generated by our data analysis framework. The data cubes and analysis data products described in this paper represent the basis for the first PHANGS-MUSE public data release and are available in the ESO archive and via the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2110.03708,
title = {The PHANGS-MUSE survey -- Probing the chemo-dynamical evolution of disc galaxies},
author = {Eric Emsellem and Eva Schinnerer and Francesco Santoro and Francesco Belfiore and Ismael Pessa and Rebecca McElroy and Guillermo A. Blanc and Enrico Congiu and Brent Groves and I-Ting Ho and Kathryn Kreckel and Alessandro Razza and Patricia Sanchez-Blazquez and Oleg Egorov and Chris Faesi and Ralf S. Klessen and Adam K. Leroy and Sharon Meidt and Miguel Querejeta and Erik Rosolowsky and Fabian Scheuermann and Gagandeep S. Anand and Ashley T. Barnes and Ivana Bešlić and Frank Bigiel and Médéric Boquien and Yixian Cao and Mélanie Chevance and Daniel A. Dale and Cosima Eibensteiner and Simon C. O. Glover and Kathryn Grasha and Jonathan D. Henshaw and Annie Hughes and Eric W. Koch and J. M. Diederik Kruijssen and Janice Lee and Daizhong Liu and Hsi-An Pan and Jérôme Pety and Toshiki Saito and Karin M. Sandstrom and Andreas Schruba and Jiayi Sun and David A. Thilker and Antonio Usero and Elizabeth J. Watkins and Thomas G. Williams},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.03708},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
48 pages, 28 figures, 4 tables, accepted for pub in A&A, Dec 8, 2021. Data products released publicly at this address https://archive.eso.org/scienceportal/home?data_collection=PHANGS