The CALIFA survey aims at spectroscopically characterising the galaxy population in the Local Universe. It will provide the bridge between large single aperture surveys and detailed studies of individual galaxies by producing two-dimensional maps of the stellar populations (ages, metallicities and star formation histories); ionised gas (distribution, excitation mechanism and chemical abundances); and kinematic properties (stellar and ionized gas components).
The spirit of the CALIFA survey is to be a legacy for the scientific community. Bearing this in mind, the CALIFA collaboration, composed by more than 80 researchers distributed over more than 25 institutions in 16 countries, has already performed the first CALIFA Data Release (DR1). Fully reduced and quality-control tested datacubes of 100 galaxies, spanning the entire Hubble classification scheme and containing up to ~5000 individual spectra each, were released in November 1, 2012. Thus, the DR1 comprises a total of ~500,000 individual spectra, i.e. an amount of spectroscopic data that is equivalent to ~60% of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Encouraged by the warm welcome that the DR1 had within the scientific community, the CALIFA collaboration is now working hard preparing the second data release (CALIFA DR2) which is expected to happen in Fall, 2014. With this objective in mind, the next CALIFA VII Busy Week will be held in St Andrews in June 9-12. In addition, the most exciting new and forthcoming scientific outputs from CALIFA will be discussed in the unrivalled setting of Scotland.
LOC
Jairo Méndez Abreu
Adriana de Lorenzo-Cáceres
Vivienne Wild