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567A6265-08FC-41AC-927B-264E6F20B781

# KMTNet Nearby Galaxy Survey: Overview and a Survey Description

Woowon Byun, Yun-Kyeong Sheen, Kwang-Il Seon, Luis C. Ho, Joon Hyeop Lee, Hyunjin Jeong, Sang Chul Kim, Byeong-Gon Park, Yongseok Lee, Sang-Mok Cha, Minjin Kim

Submitted on 2 September 2022

## Abstract

Recently, there has been an increasing demand for deep imaging surveys to investigate the history of the mass assembly of galaxies in detail by examining the remnants of mergers and accretions, both of which have very low surface brightness (LSB). In addition, the nature of star formation in LSB regions, such as galaxy outer disks, is also an intriguing topic in terms of understanding the physical mechanisms of disk evolution. To address these issues, this study conducts a survey project, called the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) Nearby Galaxy Survey to construct a deep imaging data set of nearby galaxies in the southern hemisphere using KMTNet. It provides deep and wide-field images with a field-of-view of $\sim$12 deg${}^{2}$ for 13 nearby galaxies drawn from the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey catalog, in optical broadbands ($BRI$) and an H$\alpha$ narrowband. Through a dedicated data reduction, the surface brightness limit in 10${}^{\prime \prime }×{10}^{\prime \prime }$ boxes was found to reach as deep as ${\mu }_{1\sigma }\sim 29$-31 mag arcsec${}^{-2}$ in the optical broadbands and ${f}_{1\sigma }\sim 1$-$2×{10}^{-18}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ cm${}^{-2}$ arcsec${}^{-2}$ in the H$\alpha$ narrowband. To conclude the paper, several possible scientific applications for this data set are described.

## Preprint

Comment: 32 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in PASP

Subject: Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies