CALIFA, the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey: early report

S. F. SÁNCHEZ; R. C. KENNICUTT; A. GIL DE PAZ; G. VAN DE VEN; J. VILCHEZ; L. WISOTZKI; R. A. MARINO; E. MARMOL-QUERALTÓ; D. MAST; K. VIIRONEN

Congreso; Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VI; 2010

We present here the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field spectroscopy Area survey (CALIFA). CALIFA is large collaboration comprising more than 50 astronomers of 8 different countries, which main aim is to obtain detailed spatially resolved spectroscopic information of approx600 galaxies of any type at the Local Universe. The defining science drivers for the project are: (a) model the stellar population and constrain the star formation histories; (b) trace the distribution of ionized gas and estimate chemical abundances for the gas phase; and (c) measure the kinematic properties of the galaxies, both from emission and from absorption lines; all these quantities will be recovered from maps covering the entire luminous extent of the galaxies in the sample. To achieve these goals CALIFA will sample the full optical extension of the selected galaxies (to a 3 sigma depth of μ approx 23 mag arcsec^{-2}), covering the wavelength range between 3700-7000 Å with two setups (R 850, and approx 1650), by using PPAK/PMAS at the 3.5 m telescope. The proposal was recently approved by the observatory, allocating approx 210 dark nights, distributed in 6 semesters and starting in July 2010. As a legacy survey, the fully reduced data will be delivered freely, once their quality has been verified. We report here on the results of the early analysis performed on the data taken so far (21 galaxies).