The SDSS Local Volume Mapper: Mapping Everything Everywhere All At Once – Evelyn Johnston

As part of the fifth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Local Volume Mapper (LVM) will map out the Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds and a sample of local volume galaxies with IFU spectroscopy over the next 3-4 years from a new dedicated facility here in Chile. The survey covers the southern Milky Way disk at spatial resolutions of 0.05 to 1 pc, the Magellanic Clouds at 10 pc resolution, and nearby large galaxies at larger scales totalling > 4300 sq.deg of sky and more than 55 million spectra. Scientifically, LVM resolves the regions where energy, momentum, and metals are injected into the ISM at the scale of gas clouds, while simultaneously charting where energy is being dissipated (via cooling, shocks, turbulence, bulk flows, etc.) to global scales. This combined local and global view enables us to constrain physical processes regulating how stellar feedback operates and couples to galactic kinematics and disk-scale structures, such as the bar and spiral arms, as well as gas in- and out-flows.

In this talk I will give an overview of the survey and science goals, and how astronomers in Chile can get involved.