The Herschel Reference Survey (HRS)

Welcome on the section of the Herschel Database in Marseille hosting the public data from the Herschel Reference Survey (HRS). Please, use the menu above to browse the various sections.

On the target page, you will find the table presenting the 323 targets of the HRS

The publication page gives a list of publications related to the HRS; the data associated with some of these publications are available for download on this site. Please, read the acknowledgements page is you are using these data for your work.

Survey Description

The Herschel Reference Survey is a Herschel guaranteed time key project and will be a benchmark study of dust in the nearby universe. The survey will complement a number of other Herschel key projects including large cosmological surveys that trace dust in the distant universe.

We will use Herschel to produce images of a statistically-complete sample of 323 galaxies at 250, 350, and 500 μm. The sample is volume-limited, containing sources with distances between 15 and 25 Mpc and flux limits in the band to minimize the selection effects associated with dust and with young high-mass stars and to introduce a selection in stellar mass. The sample spans the whole range of morphological types (ellipticals to late-type spirals) and environments (from the field to the center of the Virgo Cluster) and as such will be useful for other purposes than our own.

We plan to use the survey to investigate the dust content of galaxies as a function of Hubble type, stellar mass, and environment; the connection between the dust content and composition and the other phases of the interstellar medium; and the origin and evolution of dust in galaxies.

For a detailed description of the survey, we refer the reader to the article: The Herschel Reference Survey,Boselli et al. 2010, PASP, 122, 261.