THE DATA REDUCTION PIPELINE FOR THE SDSS-IV MANGA IFU GALAXY SURVEY - A concise technical overview

Aug 25, 2026

MaNGA is an optical fiber-bundle integral-field unit survey within SDSS-IV, designed to map nearby galaxies with wide spectral coverage and large sky footprint per IFU. Over six years it collects raw and reduced spectra for thousands of low-redshift galaxies, producing sky-subtracted, spectrophotometrically calibrated spectra and rectified 3-D data cubes from dithered observations. The paper details MaNGA DRP algorithms and a centralized metadata framework, then validates sky subtraction quality, continuum depth, wavelength calibration accuracy, and typical spatial and spectral resolutions for early released galaxy data.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

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Pages37

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Abstract

Introduction

AJ, in press Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 12/16/11 THE DATA REDUCTION PIPELINE FOR THE SDSS-IV MANGA IFU GALAXY SURVEY David R. Law1 , Brian Cherinka2 , Renbin Yan3 , Brett H. Andrews4 , Matthew A. Bershady5 , Dmitry Bizyaev6 , Guillermo A. Blanc7,8,9 , Michael R. Blanton10 , Adam S. Bolton11 , Joel R. Brownstein11 , Kevin Bundy12 , Yanmei Chen13,14 , Niv Drory15 , Richard D'Souza16 , Hai Fu17 , Amy Jones16 , Guinevere Kauffmann16 , Nicholas MacDonald18 , Karen L. Masters19 , Jeffrey A. Newman4 , John K. Parejko18 , Jos R. Snchez-Gallego3 , Sebastian F. Snchez20 , David J. Schlegel21 , Daniel Thomas19 , David A. Wake5,22 , Anne-Marie Weijmans23 , Kyle B. Westfall19 , Kai Zhang3 AJ, in press ABSTRACT Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) is an optical 􀀌ber-bundle integral-􀀌eld unit (IFU) spectroscopic survey that is one of three core programs in the fourth-generation 􀀗 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) . With a spectral coverage of 3622 { 10,354 A and an average footprint of 􀀘 500 arcsec2 per IFU the scienti􀀌c data products derived from MaNGA will permit exploration of the internal structure of a statistically large sample of 10,000 low redshift galaxies in unprecedented detail. Comprising 174 individually pluggable science and calibration IFUs with a near-constant data stream, MaNGA is expected to obtain 􀀘 100 million raw-frame spectra and 􀀘 10 million reduced galaxy spectra over the six-year lifetime of the survey. In this contribution, we describe the MaNGA Data Reduction Pipeline (DRP) algorithms and centralized metadata framework that produces sky-subtracted, spectrophotometrically calibrated spectra and recti􀀌ed 3-D data cubes that combine individual dithered observations. For the 1390 galaxy data cubes released in Summer 2016 as part of SDSS-IV Data Release 13 (DR13), we demonstrate that the MaNGA data have nearly Poisson- 􀀗 limited sky subtraction shortward of 􀀘 8500 A and reach a typical 10􀀛 limiting continuum surface brightness 􀀖 = 23:5 AB arcsec􀀀2 in a 􀀌ve arcsec diameter aperture in the g band. The wavelength calibration of the MaNGA data is accurate to 5 km s 􀀀1 rms, with a median spatial resolution of 2 .54 arcsec FWHM (1.8 kpc at the median redshift of 0.037) and a median spectral resolution of 􀀛 = 72 km s 􀀀1 . Keywords: methods: data analysis | surveys | techniques: imaging spectroscopy 1 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ([dlaw@stsci.edu](dlaw@stsci.edu)) 2 Center for Astrophysical Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA 3 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, 505 Rose Street, Lexington, KY 40506-0055, USA 4 Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh, 3941 O'Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA 5 Department of Astronomy, University of WisconsinMadison, 475 N. Charter Street, Madison, WI, 53706, USA 6 Apache Point Observatory, P.O. Box 59, Sunspot, NM 88349, USA 7 Departamento de Astronom􀀓􀀐a, Universidad de Chile, Camino del Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile 8 Centro de Astrof􀀓􀀐sica y Tecnolog􀀓􀀐as A􀀌nes (CATA), Camino del Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile 9 Visiting Astronomer, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara St, Pasadena, CA, 91101, USA 10 Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003 11 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, 115 S 1400 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA 12 Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, Todai Institutes for Advanced Study, the University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan 277-8583 (Kavli IPMU, WPI) 13 School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China 14 Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University

FAQs

What is MaNGA and what survey data products does the pipeline produce?

MaNGA is an integral-field unit spectroscopic survey in SDSS-IV. Its pipeline outputs sky-subtracted, spectrophotometrically calibrated spectra and rectified 3-D data cubes combining dithered observations.

Which data reduction pipeline components are described in the contribution?

The work describes MaNGA Data Reduction Pipeline (DRP) algorithms and a centralized metadata framework that supports the generation of the final calibrated cubes.

What performance characteristics are reported for the released MaNGA galaxy data cubes?

The study reports nearly Poisson-limited sky subtraction shortward of about 8500 Å, typical continuum limiting surface brightness around g band depth, wavelength calibration accuracy with km/s rms, and representative spatial and spectral resolutions.

Aug 25, 2026

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