Overview of the SDSS-IV MaNGA Survey: Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
Creators: name: Bundy, Kevin
name: Bershady, Matthew A.
name: Law, David R.
name: Yan, Renbin
name: Drory, Niv
name: MacDonald, Nicholas
name: Wake, David A.
name: Cherinka, Brian
name: Sánchez-Gallego, José R.
name: Weijmans, Anne-Marie
name: Thomas, Daniel
name: Tremonti, Christy
name: Masters, Karen
name: Coccato, Lodovico
name: Diamond-Stanic, Aleksandar M.
name: Aragón-Salamanca, Alfonso
name: Avila-Reese, Vladimir
name: Badenes, Carles
name: Falcón-Barroso, Jésus
name: Belfiore, Francesco
name: Bizyaev, Dmitry
name: Blanc, Guillermo A.
name: Bland-Hawthorn, Joss
name: Blanton, Michael R.
name: Brownstein, Joel R.
name: Byler, Nell
name: Cappellari, Michele
name: Conroy, Charlie
name: Dutton, Aaron A.
name: Emsellem, Eric
name: Etherington, James
name: Frinchaboy, Peter M.
name: Fu, Hai
name: Gunn, James E.
name: Harding, Paul
name: Johnston, Evelyn J.
name: Kauffmann, Guinevere
name: Kinemuchi, Karen
name: Klaene, Mark A.
name: Knapen, Johan H.
name: Leauthaud, Alexie
name: Li, Cheng
name: Lin, Lihwai
name: Maiolino, Roberto
name: Malanushenko, Viktor
name: Malanushenko, Elena
name: Mao, Shude
name: Maraston, Claudia
name: McDermid, Richard M.
name: Merrifield, Michael R.
name: Nichol, Robert C.
name: Oravetz, Daniel
name: Pan, Kaike
name: Parejko, John K.
name: Sanchez, Sebastian F.
name: Schlegel, David
name: Simmons, Audrey
name: Steele, Oliver
name: Steinmetz, Matthias
name: Thanjavur, Karun
name: Thompson, Benjamin A.
name: Tinker, Jeremy L.
name: Bosch, Remco C. E. van den
name: Westfall, Kyle B.
name: Wilkinson, David
name: Wright, Shelley
name: Xiao, Ting
name: Zhang, Kai
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present an overview of a new integral field spectroscopic survey called MaNGA (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory), one of three core programs in the fourth-generation Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) that began on 2014 July 1. MaNGA will investigate the internal kinematic structure and composition of gas and stars in an unprecedented sample of 10,000 nearby galaxies. We summarize essential characteristics of the instrument and survey design in the context of MaNGA's key science goals and present prototype observations to demonstrate MaNGA's scientific potential. MaNGA employs dithered observations with 17 fiber-bundle integral field units that vary in diameter from 12" (19 fibers) to 32" (127 fibers). Two dual-channel spectrographs provide simultaneous wavelength coverage over 3600-10300 A at R~2000. With a typical integration time of 3 hr, MaNGA reaches a target r-band signal-to-noise ratio of 4-8 (per A, per 2" fiber) at 23 AB mag per sq. arcsec, which is typical for the outskirts of MaNGA galaxies. Targets are selected with stellar mass greater than 1e9 Msun using SDSS-I redshifts and i-band luminosity to achieve uniform radial coverage in terms of the effective radius, an approximately flat distribution in stellar mass, and a sample spanning a wide range of environments. Analysis of our prototype observations demonstrates MaNGA's ability to probe gas ionization, shed light on recent star formation and quenching, enable dynamical modeling, decompose constituent components, and map the composition of stellar populations. MaNGA's spatially resolved spectra will enable an unprecedented study of the astrophysics of nearby galaxies in the coming 6 yr.
description: 26 pages, to be published in ApJ, instrumentation description presented in Drory et al