Newsletter 7 — December 2025

Message from the PIs

Welcome to our end-of-year MAUVE Newsletter!

The second half of the year has been an especially busy and productive period for the PI team, with a major focus on the reduction and validation of the MAUVE–MUSE data cubes. We processed 12 new galaxies and reprocessed the 14 observed last year — a substantial step forward for the survey. More details on our third internal release, consisting of science-ready MUSE cubes for 26 galaxies, are provided below. Value-added data products for these systems, along with the remaining four galaxies whose observations were completed this year, will be released to the team in 2026.

Our community also continues to grow and evolve. We are delighted to welcome David Thilker to the Executive Team, along with 15 new members who have joined MAUVE in recent months. It’s wonderful to see such strong and diverse engagement across the collaboration.

We’re also pleased to share that the S-band MeerKAT proposal led by Ian Roberts has been approved, adding an exciting new dimension to MAUVE’s multiphase view of the Virgo environment. On the publication front, our MAUVE overview article has now appeared in The ESO Messenger; two additional papers have been submitted for publication; and the second MAUVE paper — led by PhD student Amy Attwater and focusing on the NGC 4064 outflow — has just been accepted for publication in ApJL. Congratulations to all involved! Altogether, these milestones make for a strong finish to a productive year.

We look forward to building on this momentum in the year ahead.

Enjoy the newsletter, and best wishes for a restful break and an inspiring year of new MAUVE discoveries in 2026.

— Barbara & Luca

MAUVE Team, Survey Management & Communication

New members. We are delighted to welcome 15 new members to the team: Amirnezam Amiri (University of Arkansas), Gagandeep Anand (Space Telescope Science Institute), Ashley Barnes (ESO Garching), Ana L. Chies-Santos (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul), Daniel A. Dale (University of Wyoming), Rafael S. de Souza (University of Hertfordshire), Hamid Hassani (PhD student, University of Alberta), Hwihyun Kim (Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), Grace Krahm (PhD student, Ohio State University), Kirsten L. Larson (Space Telescope Science Institute), Niranjana P (PhD student, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), Patricia Sánchez-Blázquez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Yu-Hsuan (Eltha) Teng (University of Maryland), Wai Kiu Ricky Wong (PhD student, Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Renbin Yan (Chinese University of Hong Kong). We look forward to working with you all on exciting MAUVE science!

Science Projects. We’re pleased to highlight the recently approved projects making use of MAUVE data: Depth of the molecular gas layer and edge-on view of clouds from highly inclined galaxies, led by Adam Leroy & Grace Krahm based on high-resolution ALMA data; Emission-line profile diagnostics of anomalous ionised gas in MAUVE-MUSE, led by Amy Attwater and The resolved mass, metallicity, star formation rate scaling relations in MAUVE galaxies, led by Rongjun Huang, both making use of MUSE observations. Please check our wiki for more details on all the approved projects, and contact the project leads if you are interested in getting involved.

Observing Status

MAUVE-MUSE update. MUSE observations for 2025 were completed at the end of June. As reported in our previous newsletter, we now have 30 completed galaxies out of 37 (the remaining 3 have data from the PHANGS-MUSE survey). We are looking forward to the next observing cycle starting very soon, which should bring our MUSE program to completion by mid-2026.

MAUVE-ALMA update. As also reported in our previous newsletter, 20 out of the 26 MAUVE-ALMA galaxies have been fully observed with all ALMA arrays. A proposal to complete the coverage will be submitted next year.

MAUVE-HST update. HST observations began in November; a dedicated highlight with more details is provided below.

MAUVE-MUSE Data Reduction WG: third internal data release

After a challenging first half of the year, marked by issues with our HPC provider, we are happy to share that the second half brought significant progress. Most of the technical hurdles have now been resolved, allowing the MUSE Data Reduction (DR) team to move forward at full speed.

While the backlog is not completely cleared yet, we have gained significant ground and, as a holiday gift, we are excited to release a brand-new set of 25 datacubes (covering 26 galaxies) to the team (see Fig. 1). This release comes with updates to our DR workflow, which we now consider stable and we plan to be the default until survey completion. As part of this effort, we have reprocessed the 14 galaxies released last year. For most targets, the new cubes are very similar to the previous ones, but if you are starting a new project, we strongly recommend using the DR3 version. This is an incremental release, so expect more galaxies to be added as they pass our quality checks. The next update is planned for April 2026.

Value-added data products will follow later, as our current focus remains on getting to the science-ready cube for all observations. That said, we are working on improvements in that area too, but with limited capacity. If you or your students would like to contribute, please reach out!

We hope you'll enjoy exploring this new dataset as there are plenty of exciting surprises waiting inside.

— Luca

MAUVE-HST observations are now underway!

On November 20th and 22nd, the first images for the MAUVE-HST Treasury Program (HST-GO-18103) were obtained using Hubble’s WFC3/UVIS instrument. NGC 4394 (see Fig. 2) and NGC 4396 were both imaged using a narrowband Hα filter (F657N) to an exposure depth of ~2100 seconds. The associated MAUVE-HST broadband imaging (in NUV, U, B, V and I) for these targets is still forthcoming, with NGC 4396 planned for scheduling in the next few weeks and NGC 4394 in about a year.

The outlook for more MAUVE-HST data in the near term is exciting, although it will take until the end of Spring 2027 to finish the program. A total of 7 galaxies (10 fields) are anticipated to have complete observations in all filters by the end of March 2026. As now listed in the STScI-supplied HST long-term observing plan, 5 additional galaxies have broadband and narrowband (Hα) visits that are split between available windows in successive years (such as for NGC 4394). An inquiry to the STScI program coordinator has been made, asking if it would be feasible to bring forward these delayed visits to finish galaxies in a more synchronized manner.

— Dave