The PHANGS-MUSE survey. Probing the chemo-dynamical evolution of disc galaxies
Sandstrom, Karin M.; Henshaw, Jonathan D.; Kruijssen, J. M. Diederik; Leroy, Adam K.; Rosolowsky, Erik; Chevance, Mélanie; Glover, Simon C. O.; Hughes, Annie; Klessen, Ralf S.; Schinnerer, Eva; Schruba, Andreas; Bigiel, Frank; Blanc, Guillermo A.; Emsellem, Eric; Koch, Eric W.; Pety, Jérôme; Sun, Jiayi; Boquien, Médéric; Liu, Daizhong; Barnes, Ashley T.; Williams, Thomas G.; Kreckel, Kathryn; Grasha, Kathryn; Thilker, David A.; Dale, Daniel A.; Watkins, Elizabeth J.; Anand, Gagandeep S.; Cao, Yixian; Belfiore, Francesco; Pessa, Ismael; Groves, Brent; Saito, Toshiki; Ho, I. -Ting; Congiu, Enrico; Querejeta, Miguel; Lee, Janice; Pan, Hsi-An; Razza, Alessandro; Usero, Antonio; Scheuermann, Fabian; Santoro, Francesco; McElroy, Rebecca; Sanchez-Blazquez, Patricia; Egorov, Oleg; Faesi, Chris; Meidt, Sharon; Bešlić, Ivana; Eibensteiner, Cosima
Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Chile, United States, Spain, Russia, Belgium, Canada
Abstract
We present the PHANGS-MUSE survey, a programme that uses the MUSE integral field spectrograph at the ESO VLT to map 19 massive (9.4 < log(M⋆/M⊙)< 11.0) nearby (D ≲ 20 Mpc) star-forming disc galaxies. The survey consists of 168 MUSE pointings (1' by 1' each) and a total of nearly 15 × 106 spectra, covering ∼1.5 × 106 independent spectra. PHANGS-MUSE provides the first integral field spectrograph view of star formation across different local environments (including galaxy centres, bars, and 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 H II 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 H II 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.