Submitted by Administrator on Mon, 21/11/2016 - 11:57
MaNGA data are available for the first time in SDSS Data Release 13
MaNGA is the newest survey component of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV. Its goal is to map the detailed composition and kinematic structure of 10,000 nearby galaxies. MaNGA uses integral field unit (IFU) spectroscopy to obtain spectra for hundreds of points within each galaxy. For a general introduction to MaNGA, see the MaNGA survey page on this site.
MaNGA data are available for the first time in Data Release 13. The MaNGA data now available consist of the fully reduced datacubes from the first year of survey operations (more than 1000 galaxies) and all associated raw files. Future data releases will include not only more datacubes of galaxies that are currently being observed, but will also contain derived data products such as maps of emission line fluxes, gas and stellar kinematics, stellar population properties, etc.
In addition, MaNGA has also started a bright-time observing program to build a stellar library, with the aim of providing the ultimate baseline for stellar population studies of nearby galaxies. These reduced stellar spectra will be included in a future data release.
As a way to quickly access and visualise the data, information for individual MaNGA targets are now shown in the SkyServer Explore tool, such as for this sample MaNGA target galaxy.
(Text adapted from the SDSS Data Release 13 webpage, See the full details at http://www.sdss.org/dr13/manga/)
