Two-dimensional wide-field spectroscopy of nearby spiral galaxies

The emergence of a new generation of instrumentation in astrophysics, which provide spatially-resolved spectra over a large 2-dimensional (2D) field of view, is opening up a new frontier in the development of surveys based on samples of hundreds of spectra in a 2D context. The observational techniques introduced in this book represent the first attempt to obtain continuous coverage spectra of the disk of a galaxy in the nearby Universe, by the application of the Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) technique. A self-consistent methodology is defined in terms of observation, data reduction and analysis techniques for wide-field IFS surveys. This novel approach is used to analyse the properties of the ionized gas and to perform a detailed 2D study of the emission line spectra in a sample of nearby spiral galaxies. This work should be particularly useful to astronomy graduate students and advance researches with interests in the study of the interstellar medium, chemical abundances in galaxies and observational spectroscopic techniques.