KINGFISH

Key Insights on Nearby Galaxies: a Far-Infrared Survey with Herschel

• The KINGFISH project is an imaging and spectroscopic survey of 61 nearby (d < 30 Mpc) galaxies, chosen to cover a wide range of galaxy properties and local interstellar medium (ISM) environments found in the Nearby Universe. Its broad goals are to characterize the ISM of present-day galaxies, the heating and cooling of their gaseous and dust components, and to better understand the physical processes linking star formation and the ISM. KINGFISH is a direct descendant of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS), which produced complete Spitzer imaging and spectroscopic mapping and a comprehensive set of multiwavelength ancillary observations for the sample.

• The Herschel imaging consists of complete maps for the galaxies at 70, 100, 160, 250, 350, and 500 μm. The spectral line imaging of the principal atomic ISM cooling lines ([OI]63 μm, [OIII]88 μm, [NII]122,205 μm, and [CII]158 μm) covers subregions in the centers and disks that already have been mapped in the mid-infrared with Spitzer. The KINGFISH and SINGS multi-wavelength datasets combined provide panchromatic mapping of the galaxies sufficient to resolve individual star-forming regions, and tracing the important heating and cooling channels of the ISM, across a wide range of local extragalactic ISM environments.