The SAMI Galaxy Survey: Cubism and covariance, putting round pegs into square holes

We present a methodology for the regularization and combination of sparse sampled and irregularly gridded observations from fibre-optic multiobject integral field spectroscopy. The approach minimizes interpolation and retains image resolution on combining subpixel dithered data. We discuss the metho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Main Authors: Sharp, Robert, Allen, James T, Fogarty, Lisa M R, Croom, Scott M, Cortese, L, Green, Andrew W, Nielsen, Jon, Richards, Samuel, Scott, N., Taylor, E, Barnes, L.A., Bauer, Amanda E, Birchall, Michael, Bland-Hawthorn, Joss, Bloom, J V, Brough, Sarah, Bryant, J J, Cecil, Gerald, Colless, Matthew, Couch, Warwick, Drinkwater, Michael John, Driver, Simon, Foster, C, Goodwin, Michael, Gunawardhana, M.L.P., Ho, I-Ting, Hampton, Elise, Hopkins, Andrew M., Jones, Heath, Konstantopoulos, I S, Lawrence, J S, Leslie, Sarah, Lewis, G F, Liske, Jochen, Lopez-Sanchez, A R, Lorente, N.P.F., McElroy, R., Medling, Anne, Mahajan, S., Mould, Jeremy, Parker, Q., Pracy, Michael, Obreschkow, D., Owers, M S, Schaefer, A L, Sweet, Sarah, Thomas, A.D., Tonini, C, Walcher, C.J., Lawrence, J
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects:
sami
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1885/102526
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu2055
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/102526/5/01_Sharp_The_SAMI_Galaxy_Survey%253A_Cubism_2015.pdf.jpg
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Summary:We present a methodology for the regularization and combination of sparse sampled and irregularly gridded observations from fibre-optic multiobject integral field spectroscopy. The approach minimizes interpolation and retains image resolution on combining subpixel dithered data. We discuss the methodology in the context of the Sydney-AAO multiobject integral field spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey underway at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The SAMI instrument uses 13 fibre bundles to perform high-multiplex integral field spectroscopy across a 1° diameter field of view. The SAMI Galaxy Survey is targeting ~3000 galaxies drawn from the full range of galaxy environments. We demonstrate the subcritical sampling of the seeing and incomplete fill factor for the integral field bundles results in only a 10 per cent degradation in the final image resolution recovered. We also implement a new methodology for tracking covariance between elements of the resulting data cubes which retains 90 per cent of the covariance information while incurring only a modest increase in the survey data volume.

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