Public Data Release: The widest spectrocopic survey of the Orion Nebula

Calar Alto releases to the astronomical community the widest integral field spectroscopy mosaic survey of the Great Orion Nebula. This survey constitutes the widest (both spatially and in spectral range) survey ever done of this object, and allows, for the first time, the study of the true integrated properties and complex structure of this canonical, nearest to Earth HII region. The paper presenting these data, by Calar Alto astronomer Sebastián F. Sánchez and collaborators from Spain and the Netherlands, was recently published and highlighted by the European journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on its April 1 issue. Images from the survey appear on the cover of this A&A issue.

The data were obtained with PMAS/PPAK instrument attached to the 3.5 m telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory. The data covers an area of 5’x6’ centered on the Trapezium cluster and comprises 8182 individual, flux calibrated spectra. The wavelength range covered extends from 370 nm to 710 nm, with a resolution of 1 nm FWHM.