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Register a new userThe VIRUS-P Exploration of Nearby Galaxies (VENGA): Survey Design, Data Processing, and Spectral Analysis Methods
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Authors
Guillermo A. Blanc
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We present the survey design, data reduction, and spectral fitting pipeline for the VIRUS-P Exploration of Nearby Galaxies (VENGA). VENGA is an integral field spectroscopic survey, which maps the disks of 30 nearby spiral galaxies. Targets span a wide range in Hubble type, star formation activity, morphology, and inclination. The VENGA data-cubes have 5.6 FWHM spatial resolution, ~5A FWHM spectral resolution, sample the 3600A-6800A range, and cover large areas typically sampling galaxies out to ~0.7 R_25. These data-cubes can be used to produce 2D maps of the star formation rate, dust extinction, electron density, stellar population parameters, the kinematics and chemical abundances of both stars and ionized gas, and other physical quantities derived from the fitting of the stellar spectrum and the measurement of nebular emission lines. To exemplify our methods and the quality of the data, we present the VENGA data-cube on the face-on Sc galaxy NGC 628 (a.k.a. M 74). The VENGA observations of NGC 628 are described, as well as the construction of the data-cube, our spectral fitting method, and the fitting of the stellar and ionized gas velocity fields. We also propose a new method to measure the inclination of nearly face-on systems based on the matching of the stellar and gas rotation curves using asymmetric drift corrections. VENGA will measure relevant physical parameters across different environments within these galaxies, allowing a series of studies on star formation, structure assembly, stellar populations, chemical evolution, galactic feedback, nuclear activity, and the properties of the interstellar medium in massive disk galaxies.
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VENGA is a large-scale extragalactic IFU survey, which maps the bulges, bars and large parts of the outer disks of 32 nearby normal spiral galaxies. The targets are chosen to span a wide range in Hubble types, star formation activities, morphologies, and inclinations, at the same time of having vast available multi-wavelength coverage from the far-UV to the mid-IR, and available CO and 21cm mapping. The VENGA dataset will provide 2D maps of the SFR, stellar and gas kinematics, chemical abundances, ISM density and ionization states, dust extinction and stellar populations for these 32 galaxies. The uniqueness of the VIRUS-P large field of view permits these large-scale mappings to be performed. VENGA will allow us to correlate all these important quantities throughout the different environments present in galactic disks, allowing the conduction of a large number of studies in star formation, structure assembly, galactic feedback and ISM in galaxies.
We measure the radial profile of the 12CO(1-0) to H_2 conversion factor (Xco) in NGC 628. The Halpha emission from the VENGA integral field spectroscopy is used to map the star formation rate surface density (Sigma_{SFR}). We estimate the molecular gas surface density (Sigma_{H2}) from Sigma_{SFR} by inverting the molecular star formation law (SFL), and compare it to the CO intensity to measure Xco. We study the impact of systematic uncertainties by changing the slope of the SFL, using different SFR tracers (Halpha vs. far-UV plus 24mu m), and CO maps from different telescopes (single-dish and interferometers). The observed Xco profile is robust against these systematics, drops by a factor of 2 from R~7 kpc to the center of the galaxy, and is well fit by a gradient Delta log(Xco)=0.06pm0.02 dex kpc^-1. We study how changes in Xco follow changes in metallicity, gas density, and ionization parameter. Theoretical models show that the gradient in Xco can be explained by a combination of decreasing metallicity, and decreasing Sigma_{H2} with radius. Photoelectric heating from the local UV radiation field appears to contribute to the decrease of Xco in higher density regions. Our results show that galactic environment plays an important role at setting the physical conditions in star forming regions, in particular the chemistry of carbon in molecular complexes, and the radiative transfer of CO emission. We caution against adopting a single Xco value when large changes in gas surface density or metallicity are present.
NGC 1042 is a late type bulgeless disk galaxy which hosts a low luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) coincident with a massive nuclear star cluster. In this paper, we present the integral-field-spectroscopy (IFS) studies of this galaxy, based on the data obtained with the Mitchell spectrograph on the 2.7 meter Harlan J. Smith telescope. In the central $100textrm{-}300 mathrm{pc}$ region of NGC 1042, we find a circumnuclear ring structure of gas with enhanced ionization, which we suggest is mainly induced by shocks. Combining with the harmonic decomposition analysis of the velocity field of the ionized gas, we propose that the shocked gas is the result of gas inflow driven by the inner spiral arms. The inflow velocity is $sim 32pm10 mathrm{km} mathrm{s}^{-1}$ and the estimated mass inflow rate is $sim 1.1pm0.3 times 10^{-3} mathrm{M}_{odot} mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. The mass inflow rate is about one hundred times the blackholes mass accretion rate ($sim 1.4 times 10^{-5} mathrm{M}_{odot} mathrm{ yr}^{-1}$), and slightly larger than the star formation rate in the nuclear star cluster ($7.94 times 10^{-4} mathrm{M}_{odot} mathrm{yr}^{-1}$), implying that the inflow material is enough to feed both the AGN activity and the star formation in the nuclear star cluster. Our study highlights that secular evolution can be important in late-type unbarred galaxies like NGC 1042.
We study the stellar populations and assembly of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2903s bulge, bar, and outer disc using the VIRUS-P Exploration of Nearby Galaxies IFS survey. We observe NGC 2903 with a spatial resolution of 185 pc using the Mitchell Spectrographs 4.25 arcsec fibres at the 2.7 Harlan J. Smith telescope. Bulge-bar-disc decomposition on the 2MASS Ks-band image of NGC 2903 shows that it has ~6%, 6%, and 88%, of its stellar mass in the bulge, bar, and outer disc, respectively, and its bulge has a low Sersic index of ~0.27, suggestive of a disky bulge. We perform stellar population synthesis and find that the outer disc has 46% of its mass in stars >5 Gyr, 48% in stars between 1 and 5 Gyr, and <10% in younger stars. Its stellar bar has 65% of its mass in ages 1-5 Gyr and has metallicities similar to the outer disc, suggestive of the evolutionary picture where the bar forms from disc material. Its bulge is mainly composed of old high-metallicity stars though it also has a small fraction of young stars. We find enhanced metallicity in the spiral arms and central region, tracing areas of high star formation as seen in the Halpha map. These results are consistent with the idea that galaxies of low bulge-to-total mass ratio and low bulge Sersic index like NGC 2903 has not had a recent major merger event, but has instead grown mostly through minor mergers and secular processes.
We present the first results on the search for very bright (M_AB -21) galaxies at redshift z~8 from the Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey. BoRG is a Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 pure-parallel survey that is obtaining images on random lines of sight at high Galactic latitudes in four filters (F606W, F098M, F125W, F160W), with integration times optimized to identify galaxies at z>7.5 as F098M-dropouts. We discuss here results from a search area of approximately 130 arcmin^2 over 23 BoRG fields, complemented by six other pure-parallel WFC3 fields with similar filters. This new search area is more than two times wider than previous WFC3 observations at z~8. We identify four F098M-dropout candidates with high statistical confidence (detected at greater than 8sigma confidence in F125W). These sources are among the brightest candidates currently known at z~8 and approximately ten times brighter than the z=8.56 galaxy UDFy-38135539. They thus represent ideal targets for spectroscopic followup observations and could potentially lead to a redshift record, as our color selection includes objects up to z~9. However, the expected contamination rate of our sample is about 30% higher than typical searches for dropout galaxies in legacy fields, such as the GOODS and HUDF, where deeper data and additional optical filters are available to reject contaminants.
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