Newsletter 4 — July 2024
Message from the PIs
Welcome everyone to our fourth MAUVE Newsletter! It has been a very busy semester at the MAUVE headquarters, but we wanted to update you on survey progress before heading to Cape Town for the IAU General Assembly. As you can read below, 2024 has been better than last year and we managed to complete observations of 9 new galaxies, adding to the 5 already on disc. We are very busy processing the data and expect to release science-ready MUSE data cubes to the team around mid/late-September, with value-added products to follow. In the first months of 2024 we have also started our joint MAUVE+VERTICO monthly science meetings, internally released the value-added data products for the first 5 galaxies, welcomed new team members, obtained new high-resolution ALMA data, and published our very first MAUVE paper, led by Adam Watts, along with associated media releases, including the beautiful ESO picture of the week reproduced below. Enjoy the newsletter, and we hope to see many of you in Cape Town! Please get in touch if you will be there. — Barbara & Luca
MAUVE Team, Survey Management & Communication
Since December 2023, 6 new members have joined MAUVE:
Francesco de Gasperin (INAF Bologna & Hamburg University), Jennifer Laing (McMaster University), Sriram Sankar (ICRAR/UWA), Paolo Serra (INAF Cagliari), Cameron Sharp (Macquarie University) and Christine Wilson (McMaster University) — welcome all to the team! Francesco and Paolo are bringing a direct connection with the ViCTORIA (Virgo Cluster multi-Telescope Observations in Radio of Interacting galaxies and AGN) program on MeerKAT, Jennifer and Christine are strengthening even more our ties with VERTICO, and PhD students Cameron and Sriram are working on dynamical modelling and anomalous gas in MAUVE galaxies.
MAUVE results have been showcased at the 243rd AAS meeting (where Jiayi Sun presented his ALMA program, see below) and at The physical processes shaping the stellar and gaseous histories of galaxies conference in Pisa, as well as national conferences in Australia, such as the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Astronomical Society of Australia. We look forward to even more MAUVE science at the upcoming IAU General Assembly in Cape Town!
Lastly, stay tuned as we plan to provide our annual survey status update at either the September or the October science team meeting.
Observing Status
MAUVE observations this year were carried out between January 19 and July 7, during which 9 new galaxies were completed and 2 started, for a total of 38 OBs. This brings our tally to 14 completed galaxies out of 37 (the remaining 3 have data from the literature), and 51 OBs completed out of 142, i.e. a 36% completion rate.
We clearly have some way to go, and expect that observations will continue for the next 2 years. Nonetheless, the data cubes are incredibly rich, and there have already been surprises, such as a couple more outflows in galaxies below the star-forming main sequence! Keep an eye on our wiki for the detailed survey status. Remember to join our monthly science meetings if you wish to keep up with MAUVE science and are interested in contributing to any ongoing projects. You can also always propose new projects (check our wiki for more info) — there is definitely more science that can be done and we don't have the resources to do it all!Data Reduction WG
The two MAUVE PIs have been leading the data reduction efforts this year, having fun with frame alignment to fractions of a pixel (this might sound negligible but is well worth the time!) and having the very first look at these amazing data as a reward. We have currently completed the data reduction for NGC 4294, NGC 4419 and NGC 4396, with more galaxies coming very soon. Feel free to get in touch if your science requires those cubes. We plan on circulating the science-ready data cubes for all 14 completed MAUVE galaxies around mid-end/September. This new release will also include new cubes for the 5 galaxies already released last year, as there have been some updates to our data reduction pipeline.Data Products WG
In March, we had our very first release of the value-added data products for the 5 galaxies completed in 2023. Massive thanks to Toby, who worked very hard until his last day before going on leave to make sure that the nGIST pipeline was able to deal with our cubes, and to Amelia, for coordinating the nGIST development between the MAUVE and GECKOS programs. With a new data release coming by the end of the year, we are planning to make some minor changes in the way that we create products. Please get in touch if you have any feedback or wishlist.MAUVE follow up: the high-resolution ALMA CO program
It is super exciting to see the high-resolution ALMA program targeting all MAUVE galaxies coming to life. The MAUVE-ALMA CO(2-1) mapping program already has a large fraction of data taken, including all observations with the 7-m array, almost all with the total power dishes, and 12-m array observations for six targets. Jiayi Sun (supported by Adam Leroy at OSU) is leading the data reduction effort using the PHANGS pipeline. An example set of CO moment maps as the final data products for one galaxy (NGC 4580) is shown below. We anticipate a similar set of data products to become ready soon for all six galaxies with 12m+7m+tp data. Following that, a first round of quality assurance (QA) will be coordinated by Jiayi and conducted by volunteers from the team to assess data quality and identify potential issues. If you are interested in contributing to the QA efforts and/or using the preliminary data products for prototyping science, please get in touch with Jiayi.