The PHANGS-MUSE survey -- Probing the chemo-dynamical evolution of disc galaxies

TL;DR

The PHANGS-MUSE survey provides high-resolution integral field spectroscopy of 19 nearby star-forming disc galaxies, enabling detailed study of star formation, gas, and stellar kinematics at cloud-scale resolution, complemented by ALMA and HST data.

Contribution

This work introduces the PHANGS-MUSE survey, offering the first cloud-scale IFS view of star formation environments in external galaxies with a comprehensive data reduction and analysis framework.

Findings

First IFS survey at 50 pc resolution of star-forming regions in external galaxies.

Provides detailed demographics of HII regions and ionised nebulae.

Enables multi-phase analysis of star formation processes from molecular clouds to star clusters.

Abstract

We present the PHANGS-MUSE survey, a programme using the MUSE IFS at the ESO VLT to map 19 massive $(9.4 < \log(M_{*}/M_\odot) < 11.0)$ nearby (D < 20 Mpc) star-forming disc galaxies. The survey consists of 168 MUSE pointings (1'x1' each), a total of nearly 15 Million spectra, covering ~1.5 Million independent spectra. PHANGS-MUSE provides the first IFS view of star formation across different local environments (including galaxy centres, bars, spiral arms) in external galaxies at a median resolution of 50~pc, better than the mean inter-cloud distance in the ionised interstellar medium. This `cloud-scale' resolution allows detailed demographics and characterisations of HII regions and other ionised nebulae. PHANGS-MUSE further delivers a unique view on the associated gas and stellar kinematics, and provides constraints on the star formation history. The PHANGS-MUSE survey is complemented by dedicated ALMA CO(2-1) and multi-band HST observations, therefore allowing us to probe the key stages of the star formation process from molecular clouds to HII regions and star clusters. This paper describes the scientific motivation, sample selection, observational strategy, data reduction and analysis process of the PHANGS-MUSE survey. We present our bespoke automated data-reduction framework, which is built on the reduction recipes provided by ESO, but additionally allows for mosaicking and homogenisation of the point spread function. We further present a detailed quality assessment and a brief illustration of the potential scientific applications of the large set of PHANGS-MUSE data products generated by our data analysis framework. The data cubes and analysis data products described in this paper represent the basis for the first PHANGS-MUSE public data release and are available in the ESO archive and via the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.