Newsletter 6 — July 2025
Message from the PIs
Welcome to the mid-year edition of the MAUVE Newsletter! The first half of the year is always a busy time for observations with MUSE, and we’re delighted to report that 2025 has seen a significant ramp-up in activity. We are now down to just seven galaxies left to observe — which means we’re on track to complete the MUSE component of MAUVE by this time next year. A major milestone this year was our rebranding in April: MAUVE now stands for Multiphase Astrophysics to Unveil the Virgo Environment. This new name reflects the growing scope of the project, which now extends well beyond the original MUSE program. The expansion began with the high-resolution ALMA survey led by Jiayi, and continues with the newly approved HST Treasury program led by David Thilker. Targeted follow-up efforts are also underway, most recently with an S-band MeerKAT pilot proposal submitted by Ian Roberts to map cosmic-ray electrons and magnetic fields in the non-thermal ISM — fingers crossed for a positive outcome! It’s exciting to see MAUVE now serving as the umbrella for all of these multiphase, multiwavelength activities, and our team has grown accordingly — we’re now more than 70 members strong! There has also been great progress on the science front. Several papers are in the works, including two that have already circulated within the team: a study of the NGC 4064 outflow led by PhD student Amy Attwater, and an investigation of environmental effects on the ionized ISM led by Toby Brown. More manuscripts are expected later this year. We also submitted a MAUVE survey overview article to The ESO Messenger, which should appear in the next issue and will serve as a useful reference for the community. Finally, MAUVE results were recently presented at the ASA Annual Scientific Meeting in Adelaide — where Amy was awarded second place in the student poster competition for her work on the NGC 4064 outflow — as well as at the ESO conference Galactic Ecosystems under the Microscope in Garching, Germany. We’re always keen to highlight team members’ contributions, so if you’re presenting MAUVE-related results at an upcoming meeting, please let us know — we’d love to feature your work in future newsletters and help spread the word. Enjoy the rest of the newsletter — and see you at our monthly MAUVE science meetings, which will restart in September. — Barbara & LucaMAUVE Team, Survey Management & Communication
New members. We are delighted to welcome 25 new members to the team:
Ashley Bemis (University of Waterloo),
Alberto Bolatto (University of Maryland),
Yixian Cao (MPE),
I-Da Chiang (Academia Sinica, ASIAA),
Ryan Chown (Ohio State University),
Aeree Chung (Yonsei University),
Kristen Dage (Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy),
Cosima Eibensteiner (NRAO),
Celine Greis (PhD student, Leiden University),
Hao He (University of Bonn),
Rongjun Huang (PhD student, ICRAR/UWA),
Annie Hughes (Observatoire Midi-Pyrénóes),
María J. Jiménez-Donaire (Space Telescope Science Institute),
Jae Yeon Kim (Stanford University),
Eric Koch (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA),
Bumhyun Lee (Yonsei University),
Adam Leroy (Ohio State University),
Angus Mok (OCAD University, Toronto),
Ian Roberts (Leiden University),
Erik Rosolowsky (University of Alberta),
Eva Schinnerer (MPIA),
David Thilker (Johns Hopkins University),
Vicente Villanueva (Universidad de Concepción),
Thomas Williams (University of Oxford) and
Nikki Zabel (University of Cape Town).
We look forward to the contributions you'll bring to the MAUVE collaboration!
Science Projects. We’re pleased to highlight a few exciting, recently approved projects making use of MAUVE data: Constraining the orbital structure and massive black hole masses through dynamical modelling, led by Sabine Thater, using MUSE observations; A giant molecular cloud catalogue of MAUVE galaxies, led by Woorak Choi, based on high-resolution ALMA data; and A detailed study of the multiphase outflow in NGC 4383, led by Luca Cortese, combining both MUSE and ALMA observations. If you’d like to get involved with any of these projects, don’t hesitate to contact the project leads. And if you’re thinking of starting a new project using MAUVE data, please remember to fill out the proposal form on our wiki.
Anatomy of a Fall: MAUVE Wins HST Time!
We’re thrilled to announce that the MAUVE-HST proposal led by David Thilker has been awarded a large Treasury program in HST Cycle 33! Titled Anatomy of a Fall: Dissecting the Environment-Driven Transformation of Late-Type Virgo Cluster Galaxies, the program has been allocated 145 primary and 143 parallel spacecraft orbits. It will use WFC3/UVIS to obtain deep NUV, U, B, V, I, and Hα imaging of the 40 MAUVE galaxies. These observations build on our ALMA and MUSE surveys to deliver a complete, multi-phase census of stellar populations, HII regions, and gas components. Key science goals include precise age-dating of stellar clusters to reconstruct star formation histories, quantifying how feedback interacts with the ISM over time, and probing how gas removal processes during cluster infall shape the physical conditions for star formation. The resulting dataset will be released as a cross-observatory Treasury — a powerful new legacy resource for the community and a major boost to MAUVE’s multiwavelength mission.Observing Status
MAUVE-MUSE update. MUSE observations for 2025 were conducted between January 27 and June 23. During this period, we completed observations for 16 new galaxies and began 3 more. This brings us to a total of 30 fully observed galaxies out of 37 (the remaining 3 have data from the PHANGS-MUSE survey), and 113 out of 145 observing blocks completed — a 78% completion rate. This marks a major step forward compared to last year, when only 14 galaxies had been completed and our overall progress stood at 36%. With just a few galaxies left, we are well on track to finish the MUSE program by mid-2026.
MAUVE-ALMA update. As of July 2025, 20 out of the 26 MAUVE-ALMA galaxies have been fully observed with all ALMA arrays. These new data have been reduced alongside existing observations from the PHANGS sample, bringing us to over 80% completeness in terms of high-resolution CO coverage across the full MAUVE sample. Unfortunately, ALMA won’t return to the required configuration for the remainder of Cycle 11, so the remaining targets will need to be observed through our Cycle 12 follow-up proposal — fingers crossed for a successful outcome!