CALIFA, the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey

II. First public data release^⋆

¹ Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: bhusemann@aip.de
² Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
³ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA/CSIC), Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n Aptdo. 3004, 18080 Granada, Spain
⁴ Centro Astronómico Hispano Alemán de Calar Alto (CSIC-MPG), C/ Jesús Durbán Remón 2-2, 4004 Almería, Spain
⁵ Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany
⁶ RUB Research Department Plasmas with Complex Interactions, Germany
⁷ Departamento de Astrofísica y CC. de la Atmósfera, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
⁸ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, PO Box 476, 88040-900 Florianópolis, SC, Brazil
⁹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
¹⁰ Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
¹¹ Institut d’astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, UPMC 98bis Bd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
¹² CEI Campus Moncloa, UCM-UPM, Departamento de Astrofísica y CC. de la Atmósfera, Facultad de CC. Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Avda. Complutense s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain
¹³ Departamento de Física Teórica y del Cosmos, University of Granada, Facultad de Ciencias (Edificio Mecenas), 18071 Granada, Spain
¹⁴ Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computación, 18071 Granada, Spain
¹⁵ Departamento de Física Teórica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain
¹⁶ Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, Luis E. Erro 1, 72840 Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico
¹⁷ University of Vienna, Department of Astrophysics, Türkenschanzstr. 17, 1180 Vienna, Austria
¹⁸ Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics A28, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
¹⁹ Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Mönchhofstraße 12-14, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
²⁰ GEPI, Observatoire de Paris, UMR 8111, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France
²¹ CENTRA – Centro Multidisciplinar de Astrofísica, Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
²² Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Mariesvej 30, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
²³ Centro de Astrofísica and Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto, Portugal
²⁴ University of Sheffield, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hounsfield Road Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK
²⁵ Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Missouri – Kansas City, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA
²⁶ Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, PO Box 17000, Station Forces, Kingston, Ontario, K7K 7B4, Canada
²⁷ Astronomical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Boční II 1401/1a, 141 00 Prague 4, Czech Republic
²⁸ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
²⁹ Australian Astronomical Observatory, PO Box 915, North Ryde, NSW 1670, Australia
³⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
³¹ Landessternwarte, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Königstuhl 12, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
³² Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, Postbus 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
³³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, North Haugh, St Andrews, KY16 9SS, UK (SUPA)
³⁴ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri – Largo Enrico Fermi, 5 – 50125 Firenze, Italy

Received: 17 October 2012
Accepted: 31 October 2012

Abstract

We present the first public data release (DR1) of the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. It consists of science-grade optical datacubes for the first 100 of eventually 600 nearby (0.005 < z < 0.03) galaxies, obtained with the integral-field spectrograph PMAS/PPak mounted on the 3.5 m telescope at the Calar Alto observatory. The galaxies in DR1 already cover a wide range of properties in color–magnitude space, morphological type, stellar mass, and gas ionization conditions. This offers the potential to tackle a variety of open questions in galaxy evolution using spatially resolved spectroscopy. Two different spectral setups are available for each galaxy, (i) a low-resolution V500 setup covering the nominal wavelength range 3745–7500 Å with a spectral resolution of 6.0 Å (FWHM), and (ii) a medium-resolution V1200 setup covering the nominal wavelength range 3650–4840 Å with a spectral resolution of 2.3 Å (FWHM). We present the characteristics and data structure of the CALIFA datasets that should be taken into account for scientific exploitation of the data, in particular the effects of vignetting, bad pixels and spatially correlated noise. The data quality test for all 100 galaxies showed that we reach a median limiting continuum sensitivity of 1.0 × 10^-18 erg s^-1 cm^-2 Å^-1 arcsec^-2 at 5635 Å and 2.2 × 10^-18 erg s^-1 cm^-2 Å^-1 arcsec^-2 at 4500 Å for the V500 and V1200 setup respectively, which corresponds to limiting r and g band surface brightnesses of 23.6 mag arcsec^-2 and 23.4 mag arcsec^-2, or an unresolved emission-line flux detection limit of roughly 1 × 10^-17 erg s^-1 cm^-2 arcsec^-2 and 0.6 × 10^-17 erg s^-1 cm^-2 arcsec^-2, respectively. The median spatial resolution is 37, and the absolute spectrophotometric calibration is better than 15% (1σ). We also describe the available interfaces and tools that allow easy access to this first publicCALIFA data at http://califa.caha.es/DR1.