Bibcode
Calzetti, D.; Lee, J. C.; Sabbi, E.; Adamo, A.; Smith, L. J.; Andrews, J. E.; Ubeda, L.; Bright, S. N.; Thilker, D.; Aloisi, A.; Brown, T. M.; Chandar, R.; Christian, C.; Cignoni, M.; Clayton, G. C.; da Silva, R.; de Mink, S. E.; Dobbs, C.; Elmegreen, B. G.; Elmegreen, D. M.; Evans, A. S.; Fumagalli, M.; Gallagher, J. S., III; Gouliermis, D. A.; Grebel, E. K.; Herrero, A.; Hunter, D. A.; Johnson, K. E.; Kennicutt, R. C.; Kim, H.; Krumholz, M. R.; Lennon, D.; Levay, K.; Martin, C.; Nair, P.; Nota, A.; Östlin, G.; Pellerin, A.; Prieto, J.; Regan, M. W.; Ryon, J. E.; Schaerer, D.; Schiminovich, D.; Tosi, M.; Van Dyk, S. D.; Walterbos, R.; Whitmore, B. C.; Wofford, A.
Bibliographical reference
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 149, Issue 2, article id. 51, 25 pp. (2015).
Advertised on:
2
2015
Citations
177
Refereed citations
154
Description
The Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) is a Cycle 21 Treasury
program on the Hubble Space Telescope aimed at the investigation of star
formation and its relation with galactic environment in nearby galaxies,
from the scales of individual stars to those of ˜kiloparsec-size
clustered structures. Five-band imaging from the near-ultraviolet to the
I band with the Wide-Field Camera 3 (WFC3), plus parallel optical
imaging with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), is being collected
for selected pointings of 50 galaxies within the local 12 Mpc. The
filters used for the observations with the WFC3 are F275W(λ2704
Å), F336W(λ3355 Å), F438W(λ4325 Å),
F555W(λ5308 Å), and F814W(λ8024 Å) the
parallel observations with the ACS use the filters F435W(λ4328
Å), F606W(λ5921 Å), and F814W(λ8057 Å).
The multiband images are yielding accurate recent (≲50 Myr) star
formation histories from resolved massive stars and the
extinction-corrected ages and masses of star clusters and associations.
The extensive inventories of massive stars and clustered systems will be
used to investigate the spatial and temporal evolution of star formation
within galaxies. This will, in turn, inform theories of galaxy evolution
and improve the understanding of the physical underpinning of the
gas-star formation relation and the nature of star formation at
high redshift. This paper describes the survey, its goals and
observational strategy, and the initial scientific results. Because
LEGUS will provide a reference survey and a foundation for future
observations with the James Webb Space Telescope and with ALMA, a large
number of data products are planned for delivery to the community.
Based on observations obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under NASA
Contract NAS 5-26555.
Related projects
Physical properties and evolution of Massive Stars
This project aims at the searching, observation and analysis of massive stars in nearby galaxies to provide a solid empirical ground to understand their physical properties as a function of those key parameters that gobern their evolution (i.e. mass, spin, metallicity, mass loss, and binary interaction). Massive stars are central objects to
Sergio
Simón Díaz