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The COS Legacy Archive Spectroscopy Survey (CLASSY) Treasury Atlas*

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posted on 2023-06-10, 06:52 authored by Danielle A Berg, Bethan L James, Teagan King, Meaghan McDonald, Zuyi Chen, John Chisholm, Timothy Heckman, Crystal L Martin, Dan P Stark, Alessandra Aloisi, Ricardo O Amorín, Karla Z Arellano-Córdova, Matthew Bayliss, Stephen WilkinsStephen Wilkins, others
Far-ultraviolet (FUV; ~1200-2000 Å) spectra are fundamental to our understanding of star-forming galaxies, providing a unique window on massive stellar populations, chemical evolution, feedback processes, and reionization. The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope will soon usher in a new era, pushing the UV spectroscopic frontier to higher redshifts than ever before; however, its success hinges on a comprehensive understanding of the massive star populations and gas conditions that power the observed UV spectral features. This requires a level of detail that is only possible with a combination of ample wavelength coverage, signal-to-noise, spectral-resolution, and sample diversity that has not yet been achieved by any FUV spectral database. We present the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph Legacy Spectroscopic Survey (CLASSY) treasury and its first high-level science product, the CLASSY atlas. CLASSY builds on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive to construct the first high-quality (S/N1500 Å ? 5/resel), high-resolution (R ~ 15,000) FUV spectral database of 45 nearby (0.002 < z < 0.182) star-forming galaxies. The CLASSY atlas, available to the public via the CLASSY website, is the result of optimally extracting and coadding 170 archival+new spectra from 312 orbits of HST observations. The CLASSY sample covers a broad range of properties including stellar mass (6.2 < log M ?(M ?) < 10.1), star formation rate (-2.0 < log SFR (M ? yr-1) < +1.6), direct gas-phase metallicity (7.0 < 12+log(O/H) < 8.8), ionization (0.5 < O32 < 38.0), reddening (0.02 < E(B - V) < 0.67), and nebular density (10 < n e (cm-3) < 1120). CLASSY is biased to UV-bright star-forming galaxies, resulting in a sample that is consistent with the z ~ 0 mass-metallicity relationship, but is offset to higher star formation rates by roughly 2 dex, similar to z ? 2 galaxies. This unique set of properties makes the CLASSY atlas the benchmark training set for star-forming galaxies across cosmic time.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series

ISSN

0067-0049

Publisher

American Astronomical Society

Issue

2

Volume

261

Page range

1-41

Department affiliated with

  • Physics and Astronomy Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2023-04-24

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2023-04-24

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2023-04-21

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