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We analyze the cool gas in and around 14 nearby galaxies (atz< 0.1) mapped with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV MaNGA survey by measuring absorption lines produced by gas in spectra of background quasars/active galactic nuclei at impact parameters of 0–25 effective radii from the galactic centers. Using Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, we detect absorption at the galactic redshift and measure or constrain column densities of neutral (Hi, Ni, Oi, and Ari), low-ionization (Siii, Sii, Cii, Nii, and Feii), and high-ionization (Siiii, Feiii, Nv, and Ovi) species for 11 galaxies. We derive the ionization parameter and ionization-corrected metallicity usingcloudyphotoionization models. The Hicolumn density ranges from ∼10¹³to ∼10²⁰cm⁻²and decreases with impact parameter forr≳R_e. Galaxies with higher stellar mass have weaker Hiabsorption. Comparing absorption velocities with MaNGA radial velocity maps of ionized gas line emissions in galactic disks, we find that the neutral gas seen in absorption corotates with the disk out to ∼10R_e. Sight lines with lower elevation angles show lower metallicities, consistent with the metallicity gradient in the disk derived from MaNGA maps. Higher-elevation angle sight lines show higher ionization, lower Hicolumn density, supersolar metallicity, and velocities consistent with the direction of galactic outflow. Our data offer the first detailed comparisons of circumgalactic medium (CGM) properties (kinematics and metallicity) with extrapolations of detailed galaxy maps from integral field spectroscopy; similar studies for larger samples are needed to more fully understand how galaxies interact with their CGM.

 

We describe the optimum telescope focal ratio for a two-element, three-surface, telecentric image-transfer microlens-to-fiber coupled integral field unit within the constraints imposed by microoptics fabrication and optical aberrations. We create a generalized analytical description of the microoptics optical parameters from first principles. We find that the optical performance, including all aberrations, of a design constrained by an analytic model considering only spherical aberration and diffraction matches within ± 4 % of a design optimized by ray-tracing software such as Zemax. The analytical model does not require any compromise on the available clear aperture; about 90% mechanical aperture of hexagonal microlens is available for light collection. The optimum telescope f-ratio for a 200-μm core fiber-fed at f / 3.5 is between f / 7 and f / 12. We find the optimum telescope focal ratio changes as a function of fiber core diameter and fiber input beam speed. A telescope focal ratio of f / 8 would support the largest range of fiber diameters (100 to 500 μm) and fiber injection speeds (between f / 3 and f / 5). The optimization of the telescope and lenslet-coupled fibers is relevant for the design of high-efficiency dedicated survey telescopes, and for retrofitting existing facilities via introducing focal macro-optics to match the instrument input requirements. 

The optical fiber integral field unit (IFU) built to feed the near infrared (NIR) spectrograph for the 11-meter Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) has undergone prototyping and rigorous performance testing at Wash- burn Astronomical Laboratories of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Astronomy Department. The 43 m length of 256 fibers which make up the object and sky arrays and spares are routed from the SALT payload down into the spectrograph room in four separate cables. The IFU covers 344 arcsec2 on the sky, with the object array spanning a 552 arcsec2 near-rectangular area at roughly 56% fill-factor. Companion papers describe the mechanical design of the fiber cable that mitigates potential sources of mechanical strain on the optical fiber (Smith et al.) and details of the spectrograph (Wolf et al.). Here we present the results of the performance testing of various test cables as well as performance testing and end-to-end mapping of the fully-assembled science cable. The fiber optics experience an extreme temperature gradient at the ingress to the instrument enclosure held at -40 ◦C during operation. We find an increase in focal ratio degradation (FRD) when holding progressively longer lengths of test fiber at reduced temperature. However, we confirm that this temperature dependent FRD is negligible for our designed length of cold fiber. We also find negligible contributions to FRD from the rubber seal that breaches the room temperature strain relief box and the cold instrument enclosure. Our measure- ments characterize performance including the effects of internal fiber inhomogeneities, stress induced from fiber handling and termination, as well as any imperfections from end-polishing. We present the room-temperature laboratory performance measurements of the fully-assembled science cable; the effective total throughput the fiber cable delivers to the spectrograph collimator is 81±2.5% across all fibers accounting for all losses. 

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey MaNGA program has now obtained integral field spectroscopy for over 10,000 galaxies in the nearby universe. We use the final MaNGA data release DR17 to study the correlation between ionized gas velocity dispersion and galactic star formation rate, finding a tight correlation in whichσ_Hαfrom galactic Hiiregions increases significantly from ∼18–30 km s⁻¹, broadly in keeping with previous studies. In contrast,σ_Hαfrom diffuse ionized gas increases more rapidly from 20–60 km s⁻¹. Using the statistical power of MaNGA, we investigate these correlations in greater detail using multiple emission lines and determine that the observed correlation ofσ_Hαwith local star formation rate surface density is driven primarily by the global relation of increasing velocity dispersion at higher total star formation rate, as are apparent correlations with stellar mass. Assuming Hiiregion models consistent with our finding thatσ_[OIII]<σ_Hα<σ_{[O I]}, we estimate the velocity dispersion of the molecular gas in which the individual Hiiregions are embedded, finding valuesσ_Mol= 5–30 km s⁻¹consistent with ALMA observations in a similar mass range. Finally, we use variations in the relation with inclination and disk azimuthal angle to constrain the velocity dispersion ellipsoid of the ionized gasσ_z/σ_r= 0.84 ± 0.03 andσ_ϕ/σ_r= 0.91 ± 0.03, similar to that of young stars in the Galactic disk. Our results are most consistent with the theoretical models in which turbulence in modern galactic disks is driven primarily by star formation feedback.

 

We present, for the first time, the relationship between local stellar mass surface density, Σ_*, and N/O derived from SDSS-IV MaNGA data, using a sample of 792,765 high signal-to-noise ratio star-forming spaxels. Using a combination of phenomenological modeling and partial correlation analysis, we find that Σ_*alone is insufficient to predict the N/O in MaNGA spaxels and that there is an additional dependence on the local star formation rate surface density, Σ_SFR. This effect is a factor of 3 stronger than the dependence of 12+log(O/H) on Σ_SFR. Surprisingly, we find that the local N/O scaling relations also depend on the total galaxy stellar mass at fixed Σ_*and the galaxy size at fixed stellar mass. We find that more compact galaxies are more nitrogen rich, even when Σ_*and Σ_SFRare controlled for. We show that ∼50% of the variance of N/O is explained by the total stellar mass and size. Thus, the evolution of nitrogen in galaxies is set by more than just local effects and does not simply track the buildup of oxygen in galaxies. The precise form of the N/O–O/H relation is therefore sensitive to the sample of galaxies from which it is derived. This result casts doubt on the universal applicability of nitrogen-based strong-line metallicity indicators derived in the local universe.

 

We use the statistical power of the MaNGA integral-field spectroscopic galaxy survey to improve the definition of strong line diagnostic boundaries used to classify gas ionization properties in galaxies. We detect line emission from 3.6 million spaxels distributed across 7400 individual galaxies spanning a wide range of stellar masses, star formation rates, and morphological types, and find that the gas-phase velocity dispersion σHα correlates strongly with traditional optical emission-line ratios such as [S II]/Hα, [N II]/Hα, [O I]/Hα, and [O III]/Hβ. Spaxels whose line ratios are most consistent with ionization by galactic H II regions exhibit a narrow range of dynamically cold line-of-sight velocity distributions (LOSVDs) peaked around 25 km s-1 corresponding to a galactic thin disk, while those consistent with ionization by active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and low-ionization emission-line regions (LI(N)ERs) have significantly broader LOSVDs extending to 200 km s-1. Star-forming, AGN, and LI(N)ER regions are additionally well separated from each other in terms of their stellar velocity dispersion, stellar population age, Hα equivalent width, and typical radius within a given galaxy. We use our observations to revise the traditional emission-line diagnostic classifications so that they reliably identify distinct dynamical samples both in two-dimensional representations of the diagnostic line ratio space and in a multidimensional space that accounts for the complex folding of the star-forming model surface. By comparing the MaNGA observations to the SDSS single-fiber galaxy sample, we note that the latter is systematically biased against young, low-metallicity star-forming regions that lie outside of the 3″ fiber footprint. 

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) program has been operating from 2014 to 2020, and has now observed a sample of 9269 galaxies in the low redshift universe (z ∼ 0.05) with integral-field spectroscopy. With rest-optical (λλ0.36-1.0 μm) spectral resolution R ∼ 2000 the instrumental spectral line-spread function (LSF) typically has 1σ width of about 70 km s-1, which poses a challenge for the study of the typically 20-30 km s-1 velocity dispersion of the ionized gas in present-day disk galaxies. In this contribution, we present a major revision of the MaNGA data pipeline architecture, focusing particularly on a variety of factors impacting the effective LSF (e.g., under-sampling, spectral rectification, and data cube construction). Through comparison with external assessments of the MaNGA data provided by substantially higher-resolution R ∼ 10,000 instruments, we demonstrate that the revised MPL-10 pipeline measures the instrumental LSF sufficiently accurately (≤0.6% systematic, 2% random around the wavelength of Hα) that it enables reliable measurements of astrophysical velocity dispersions σHα ∼ 20 km s-1 for spaxels with emission lines detected at signal-to-noise ratio > 50. Velocity dispersions derived from [O II], Hβ, [O III], [N II], and [S II] are consistent with those derived from Hα to within about 2% at σHα > 30 km s-1. Although the impact of these changes to the estimated LSF will be minimal at velocity dispersions greater than about 100 km s-1, scientific results from previous data releases that are based on dispersions far below the instrumental resolution should be reevaluated.