The PHANGS-HST Survey: Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS with the Hubble Space Telescope

Abstract

The PHANGS program is building the first dataset to enable the multi-phase, multi-scale study of star formation across the nearby spiral galaxy population. This effort is enabled by large survey programs with ALMA, VLT/MUSE, and HST, with which we have obtained CO(2-1) imaging, optical spectroscopic mapping, and high resolution UV-optical imaging, respectively. Here, we present PHANGS-HST, which has obtained five band NUV-U-B-V-I imaging of the disks of 38 spiral galaxies at distances of 4-23 Mpc, and parallel V and I band imaging of their halos, to provide a census of tens of thousands of compact star clusters, and multi-scale stellar associations. The combination of HST, ALMA, and VLT/MUSE observations will yield an unprecedented joint catalog of the observed and physical properties of ~100,000 star clusters, associations, HII regions, and molecular clouds. With these basic units of star formation, PHANGS will systematically chart the evolutionary cycling between gas and stars, across a diversity of galactic environments found in nearby galaxies. We discuss the design of the PHANGS-HST survey, and provide an overview of the HST data processing pipeline and first results, highlighting new methods for selecting star cluster candidates, morphological classification of candidates with convolutional neural networks, and identification of stellar associations over a range of physical scales with a watershed algorithm. We describe the cross-observatory imaging, catalogs, and software products to be released. These high-level science products will seed a broad range of investigations, in particular, the study of embedded stellar populations and dust with JWST, for which a PHANGS Cycle 1 Treasury program to obtain eight band 2-21 $\mu$m imaging has been approved.

ApJS in press. Accepted draft includes moderate revision and updates to the originally posted submitted version. 27 pages, 11 figures, 1 table. Data products released at https://archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phangs-hst/

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Cited by in corpus (86)

• The PHANGS-MUSE survey -- Probing the chemo-dynamical evolution of disc galaxies
• The PHANGS-JWST Treasury Survey: Star Formation, Feedback, and Dust Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS
• Molecular Cloud Populations in the Context of Their Host Galaxy Environments: A Multiwavelength Perspective
• The PHANGS-MUSE Nebula Catalogue
• Environmental dependence of the molecular cloud lifecycle in 54 main sequence galaxies
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: A statistical view on bubble evolution in NGC628
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Destruction of the PAH molecules in HII regions probed by JWST and MUSE
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Multi-wavelength view of feedback-driven bubbles (The Phantom Voids) across NGC 628
• Comparing the pre-SNe feedback and environmental pressures for 6000 HII regions across 19 nearby spiral galaxies
• Introducing EMP-Pathfinder: modelling the simultaneous formation and evolution of stellar clusters in their host galaxies
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Mapping the 3.3 micron Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Vibrational Band in Nearby Galaxies with NIRCam Medium Bands
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Massive Young Star Clusters and New Insights from JWST Observations of NGC 1365
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Duration of the early phase of massive star formation in NGC628
• Quantifying the energetics of molecular superbubbles in PHANGS galaxies
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Rapid Evolution of Star Formation in the Central Molecular Gas Ring of NGC1365
• H$\alpha$ Morphologies of Star Clusters in 16 LEGUS Galaxies: Constraints on HII region evolution timescales
• Dense molecular gas properties on 100 pc scales across the disc of NGC 3627
• The Gas-Star Formation Cycle in Nearby Star-forming Galaxies II. Resolved Distributions of CO and H$\alpha$ Emission for 49 PHANGS Galaxies
• Variations in the ${\Sigma }_{\mathrm{SFR}}-{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{mol}}-{\Sigma }_{\star }$ plane across galactic environments in PHANGS galaxies
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: The Dust Filament Network of NGC 628 and its Relation to Star Formation Activity
• Linking stellar populations to HII regions across nearby galaxies: I. Constraining pre-supernova feedback from young clusters in NGC1672
• PHANGS--JWST First Results: ISM structure on the turbulent Jeans scale in four disk galaxies observed by JWST and ALMA
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: The 21 $\mu$m Compact Source Population
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: The Influence of Stellar Clusters on PAHs in Nearby Galaxies
• Improving Star Cluster Age Estimates in PHANGS-HST Galaxies and the Impact on Cluster Demographics in NGC 628
• Fuelling the nuclear ring of NGC 1097
• Dissecting Nearby Galaxies with piXedfit: I. Spatially Resolved Properties of Stars, Dust, and Gas as Revealed by Panchromatic SED Fitting
• Stellar associations powering HII regions $\unicode{x2013}$ I. Defining an evolutionary sequence
• Role of magnetic fields in fueling Seyfert nuclei
• PHANGS: Constraining Star Formation Timescales Using the Spatial Correlations of Star Clusters and Giant Molecular Clouds
• Empirically-motivated early feedback: momentum input by stellar feedback in galaxy simulations inferred through observations
• Identifying the SN 2022acko progenitor with JWST
• Quantifying the energy balance between the turbulent ionised gas and young stars
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: Stellar Feedback-Driven Excitation and Dissociation of Molecular Gas in the Starburst Ring of NGC 1365?
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury: Triangulum Extended Region (PHATTER). IV. Star Cluster Catalog
• Multi-Scale Stellar Associations across the Star Formation Hierarchy in PHANGS-HST Nearby Galaxies: Methodology and Properties
• Star Cluster Classification using Deep Transfer Learning with PHANGS-HST
• Molecular gas and star formation within 12 strong galactic bars observed with IRAM-30m
• The Galactic neutron star population I - an extragalactic view of the Milky Way and the implications for fast radio bursts
• Metallicity calibrations based on auroral lines from PHANGS-MUSE data
• The PHANGS-HST-Halpha Survey: Warm Ionized Gas Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS with the Hubble Space Telescope
• A Deep, High-Angular Resolution 3D Dust Map of the Southern Galactic Plane
• Rubin Observatory LSST Stars Milky Way and Local Volume Star Clusters Roadmap
• Empirical SED Templates for Star Clusters Observed with HST and JWST: No Strong PAH or IR Dust Emission after Five Myr
• Linking stellar populations to HII regions across nearby galaxies. II. Infrared Reprocessed and UV Direct Radiation Pressure in HII Regions
• A physically motivated `charge-exchange method' for measuring electron temperatures within HII regions
• Origins of the Evil Eye: M64's Stellar Halo Reveals the Recent Accretion of an SMC-mass Satellite
• A Tale of 3 Dwarfs: No Extreme Cluster Formation in Extreme Star-Forming Galaxies
• Living on the edge of the Central Molecular Zone: G1.3 is the more likely candidate for gas accretion into the CMZ
• Necessary conditions for the formation of filaments and star clusters in the cold neutral medium
• Constraining the LyC escape fraction from LEGUS star clusters with SIGNALS HII region observations: A pilot study of NGC 628
• CI and CO in Nearby Spiral Galaxies -- I. Line Ratio and Abundance Variations at ~ 200 pc Scales
• PHANGS-HST: Globular Cluster Systems in 17 Nearby Spiral Galaxies
• The PHANGS-MUSE/HST-Halpha Nebulae Catalogue
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• The X-ray Binary-Star Cluster Connection in Late-Type Galaxies
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• Duration and properties of the embedded phase of star formation in 37 nearby galaxies from PHANGS-JWST
• Decoding NGC 628 with radiative transfer methods
• A 260 pc resolution ALMA map of HCN(1-0) in the galaxy NGC 4321
• PAH Marks the Spot: Digging for Buried Clusters in Nearby Star-forming Galaxies
• Infrared bubble recognition in the Milky Way and beyond using deep learning
• A power spectral study of PHANGS galaxies with JWST MIRI: On the spatial scales of dust and PAHs
• Clump formation in ram-pressure stripped galaxies: evidence from mass function
• Galactic properties that favour star cluster formation: a statistical view
• Physical parameters of stellar population in star formation regions of galaxies
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• Cloud populations versus galactic environment in NGC4689, NGC628, NGC1566, and NGC4321
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• A stellar stream around the spiral galaxy Messier 61 in Rubin First Look imaging
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• Optical Extinctions of Inter-Arm Molecular Clouds in M31: A Pilot Study for the Upcoming CSST Observations
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