This data release presents a wide-field MUSE mosaic of the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253 (the Sculptor Galaxy), covering its entire star-forming disc. The mosaic combines 103 individual MUSE pointings in Wide Field Mode, spanning 20 × 5 arcmin² and totaling approximately 25 hours of on-source exposure. Most of the observations (101 pointings) were obtained without adaptive optics (AO) using short exposures (~850 s), while the two central nuclear pointings were observed with AO and longer integrations (~2000 s).
Release of "The MUSE View of the Sculptor" Programme
Published: 22 Aug 2025
The release includes the fully mosaicked datacube, as well as a suite of ancillary data products generated using the PHANGS Data Analysis Pipeline (DAP). These products include emission-line flux maps (e.g. Hα, [N II], [S II]), gas and stellar kinematics, moment maps, and other derived quantities. Together, they enable detailed studies of the ionised interstellar medium, stellar feedback, and gas kinematics across the disk of NGC 253.
The data products can be queried and downloaded using the ESO Archive Science Portal or the programmatic access. However, given the large size of the full mosaic (~350 GB), users are encouraged to explore the dataset using the following tools:
- Use the Archive Science Portal Preview Service to quickly inspect the data online.*
- Use the Archive Science Portal Cutout Service to extract only a region of interest.*
- Use the example Jupyter notebook for extracting spectra from specific positions and visualising emission-line maps programmatically in Python.*
- Download the PHANGS Data Analysis Pipeline Ancillary Products which provide precomputed maps of individual emission lines.
*Please be aware that, because of the very large data volume, preview and cutout requests may occasionally time out. This is normal behaviour for such large datasets, and in most cases simply retrying will solve the issue.
The DOI assigned to this data collection is 10.18727/archive/100, and for additional information see the release description.