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R. Kennicutt (U. Arizona), SINGS Team
The SINGS Legacy project is a comprehensive imaging and spectroscopic survey of 75 nearby galaxies. Its primary goal is to characterize the infrared emission of galaxies and their principle IR-emitting components, across the entire range of galaxy properties and star formation environments, including regions that until now have been inaccessible at infrared wavelengths. SINGS will provide new insights into the physical processes connecting star formation to the ISM properties of galaxies, and provide a vital foundation of of data, diagnostic tools, and astrophysical inputs for understanding infrared observations of ultraluminous galaxies and the distant universe. The combination of the SIRTF data with ancillary UV, visible, near-IR, and radio observations will make it possible to integrate visible/UV and IR/submillimeter diagnostics of star formation and the ISM into a coherent, self-consistent framework, and apply them across the full range of interstellar environments found in the local universe.
The SINGS galaxy sample and observing strategy are designed to maximize the scientific and archival value of the data set for the SIRTF user community at large. Observations will include full imaging of each galaxy at 3.5--160 \mum, low-resolution spectral mapping across each galaxy at 14--99 \mum, and high-resolution spectroscopy at 5--37 \mum of their centers and a representative set of IR-emitting extra-nuclear regions. The images and spectra, combined with the ancillary data into a multi-wavelength archive, will enable scores of archival investigations of problems in galactic structure and evolution, star formation, stellar populations, interstellar dust, and ISM physics. This talk will highlight the main astrophysical issues to be addressed by SINGS, and describe the observing program, the data products, and opportunities for archival research and follow-up GO observations.