The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey. I. Science Goals, Survey Design, and Strategy

By R. Giovanelli, M. Haynes, B. Kent, P. Perillat, A. Saintonge, N. Brosch, B. Catinella, G. L. Hoffman, S. Stierwalt, K. Spekkens and 30 more. 2005

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The recently initiated Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey aims to map ∼7000 deg2 of the high Galactic latitude sky visible from Arecibo, providing a H I line spectral database covering the redshift range between -1600 and 18,000 km s-1 with ∼5 km s-1 resolution. Exploiting Arecibo's large collecting area and small beam size, ALFALFA is specifically designed to probe the faint end of the H I mass function in the local universe and will provide a census of H I in the surveyed sky area to faint flux limits, making it especially useful in synergy with wide-area surveys conducted at other wavelengths. ALFALFA will also provide the basis for studies of the dynamics of galaxies within the Local Supercluster and nearby superclusters, allow measurement of the H I diameter function, and enable a first wide-area blind search for local H I tidal features, H I absorbers at z < 0.06, and OH megamasers in the redshift range 0.16 < z < 0.25. Although completion of the survey will require some 5 years, public access to the ALFALFA data and data products will be provided in a timely manner, thus allowing its application for studies beyond those targeted by the ALFALFA collaboration. ALFALFA adopts a two-pass, minimum intrusion, drift scan observing technique that samples the same region of sky at two separate epochs to aid in the discrimination of cosmic signals from noise and terrestrial interference. Survey simulations, which take into account large-scale structure in the mass distribution and incorporate experience with the ALFA system gained from tests conducted during its commissioning phase, suggest that ALFALFA will detect on the order of 20,000 extragalactic H I line sources out to z ∼ 0.06, including several hundred with H I masses M < 107.5 M⊙.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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Citations in the corpus

THE ARECIBO LEGACY FAST ALFA SURVEY: THE α.40 H i SOURCE CATALOG, ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE DERIVATION OF THE H i MASS FUNCTION (2011, methodology): “…= { 0.15S/N (W50/200) 1/2, W50 < 200 0.15S/N (W50/200), W50 ≥ 200 (3) Note that the above expression differs from that given in Equation 2 of Giovanelli et al. (2005b) (numerical factor of 0.15 vs. 0.22) because that work adopts the rms appropriate to the single-drift maps used in the…”
NIHAO - XI. Formation of ultra-diffuse galaxies by outflows (2016, background): “Given their predicted MHI, some UDGs should be seen, or have already been seen, by the HI Alfalfa survey (Giovanelli et al. 2005; Haynes et al. 2011).”
Cold gas stripping in satellite galaxies: from pairs to clusters (2016, background): “In recent times, large area, blind surveys such as the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA; Giovanelli et al. 2005) survey have begun to address this.”
xGASS: total cold gas scaling relations and molecular-to-atomic gas ratios of galaxies in the local Universe (2018, background): “…such as the H I Parkes All-Sky Survey (Barnes et al. 2001; Meyer et al. 2004; Wong et al. 2006), and the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey (ALFALFA; Giovanelli et al. 2005; Haynes et al. 2011) measured the H I content for ∼50 000 galaxies, but detect only the most gas-rich systems in most of their…”
Environmental Effects on Late‐Type Galaxies in Nearby Clusters (2006, background): “The recently initiated Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey aims to map ∼7000 deg2 of the high Galactic latitude sky visible from Arecibo (Giovanelli et al. 2005b).”
Illuminating Low Surface Brightness Galaxies with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, background): “The largest volume blind H I survey to date is the Arecibo Legacy Fast Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFALFA; Giovanelli et al. 2005).”
UPDATED NEARBY GALAXY CATALOG (2013, methodology): “We also have made extensive use of the following Web services of surveys: the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the HI Parkes All Sky Survey (HIPASS), the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey (ALFALFA), the Extragalactic Distance Database (EDD), the Sloan Digital S”
The ATLAS3D project – I. A volume-limited sample of 260 nearby early-type galaxies: science goals and selection criteria (2010, methodology): “We observed all galaxies outside Virgo, and galaxies inside Virgo detected by the Alfalfa survey (Giovanelli et al. 2005), with the Westerbork SynthesisRadio Telescope (WSRT).”
The effect of the environment on the Hi scaling relations (2011, methodology): “The advent of large Hi surveys, such as the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey (Giovanelli et al. 2005), which eventually will provide Hi masses for a few tens of thousands of galaxies over areas of sky with large multiwavelength coverage, is gradually allowing detailed statistical analysis of Hi prope”
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey - VIII. Final data release. The effect of group environment on the gas content of massive galaxies (2013, background): “…et al. 2004), environmental comparisons must be done at fixed stellar mass. Hi-blind surveys such as the ongoing Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA; Giovanelli et al. 2005) survey map large volumes, but are not sensitive enough to detect Hipoor systems beyond the very local Universe (Gavazzi et…”
The SDSS-IV MaNGA Sample: Design, Optimization, and Usage Considerations (2017, methodology): “…in redshifts from the NASA Extragalactic Database (NED21), the CfA Redshift Survey (ZCAT22, Huchra & Geller 1991), Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey (ALFALFA, Giovanelli et al. 2005), the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dF Colless et al. 2001), and the 6dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (6dF Jones et al. 2009).”
xCOLD GASS: The Complete IRAM 30 m Legacy Survey of Molecular Gas for Galaxy Evolution Studies (2017, methodology): “When available, HI masses are taken from the ALFALFA blind survey catalog (Giovanelli et al. 2005; Haynes et al. 2011), else they are observed with Arecibo as part of this programme.”
The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey: The ALFALFA Extragalactic H i Source Catalog (2018, methodology): “The catalogued values W50 and W20 give the full widths at 50% and 20% of the peak flux as measured between the polynomial fits on either side.”
A STELLAR MASS THRESHOLD FOR QUENCHING OF FIELD GALAXIES (2012, background): “…plus several other sources: the 2-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS; Colless et al. 2001), the 6-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (6dfGRS; Jones et al. 2004), ZCAT4, ALFALFA (Giovanelli et al. 2005) as well as every redshift within z < 0.055 from the NASA Extragalactic Database (NED).”
Molecular and atomic gas along and across the main sequence of star-forming galaxies (2016, background): “The most gas-rich galaxies in the sample are already detected in the ALFALFA survey (Giovanelli et al. 2005; Haynes et al. 2011) and therefore not reobserved.”
THE NEXT GENERATION VIRGO CLUSTER SURVEY (NGVS). I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SURVEY (2012, background): “Perhaps most relevant for the NGVS, because of its higher sensitivity and spatial resolution, is the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey (ALFALFA; Giovanelli et al. 2005; Kent 2008; Haynes et al. 2011).”
COLD GASS, an IRAM legacy survey of molecular gas in massive galaxies – I. Relations between H2, H i, stellar content and structural properties (2011, background): “The most advanced of these, the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey (ALFALFA; Giovanelli et al. 2005), will have detected upon completion ∼30 000 galaxies out to distances of ∼200 Mpc.”
The ATLAS3D project - XIII. Mass and morphology of H I in early-type galaxies as a function of environment (2011, methodology): “Recent progress in this kind of analysis has been made possible by single-dish blind surveys of large areas of the sky such as HIPASS (Barnes et al. 2001; see Sadler, Oosterloo & Morganti 2002 for an H I study of ETGs based on these data) and ALFALFA (Giovanelli et al. 2005).”
The Origin of Dwarf Ellipticals in the Virgo Cluster (2008, background): “We notice however that the HI emission of the rampressure stripped dwarf galaxy population can be hardly detected by the recent HI surveys such as ALFALFA (Giovanelli et al. 2005) and AGES (Auld et al. 2006), able to reach only galaxies with HI gas masses ≥ 107.5 M⊙ (ALFALFA) or slightly smaller (AG”
(Almost) Dark Galaxies in the ALFALFA Survey: Isolated H i-bearing Ultra-diffuse Galaxies (2017, methodology): “ALFALFA Data The ALFALFA observations, data reduction, and catalog products are detailed elsewhere (e.g. Giovanelli et al. 2005; Saintonge 2007; Haynes et al. 2011).”