LASEX

The Census of Austral Nearby GAlaxies (CANGA survey) entails a study the past formation history of galaxies in a pixel-by-pixel approach. The program consists of an ongoing observational campaign using the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope (4.1 m, Chile). The CANGA survey will be a great step for Brazilian extragalactic astronomy, complementing the exquisite work that has been performed by the Sloan Digital Sky Server (SDSS) in the northern hemisphere. Our data, however, will be 15 times more sensitive opening up the stage for deep spatially-resolved stellar population analysis of faint galaxy regions, including disk outskirts, where tell-tale signs of the dark matter halo spatial distribution can be studied. Largely surpassing SDSS sensitivity, this program is the beginning of the deepest mapping of nearby galaxies in the southern hemisphere. The synergistic value with the ALMA radio interferometers in Chile, the European MUSE integral field spectrograph in the optical, Meerkat radio telescope in South Africa and further into the future, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), renders this program one of great potential.

CANGA history

2019

Our 2018 CANGA lineup:

We submitted a new proposal for the the 2019A semester showing our full collection and analysis strategy and were immensely happy to be the largest Brazilian program approved, with 66 hours of observing time in June/July 2019.

2018

In 2018 we presented the observing proposal to the Brazilian SOAR Time Allocation Committee (TAC) to combine SOAR imaging in the optical with mid-IR data from the Spitzer Survey for Stellar Structures in Galaxies (S4G; Sheth et al. 2010) to undertake a spatially-resolved analysis of the stellar population in the different galactic structures. In the spirit of a pilot study (for the 2018B semester), we proposed to undertake optical imaging using 4 filters (griz) of 8 barred spiral galaxies with the Goodman high-throughput imager. The request was approved, allowing us to test the observing strategy, as well as the data reduction and the analysis that we anticipate applying to a more extended sample.