Description
We are performing a uniform and unbiased imaging survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC; ~7{deg}x7{deg}) using the IRAC (3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8um) and MIPS (24, 70, and 160um) instruments on board the Spitzer Space Telescope in the Surveying the Agents of a Galaxy's Evolution (SAGE) survey, these agents being the interstellar medium (ISM) and stars in the LMC. This paper provides an overview of the SAGE Legacy project, including observing strategy, data processing, and initial results. The observing strategy includes two epochs in 2005, separated by 3 months, that both mitigate instrumental artifacts and constrain source variability. The SAGE data are nonproprietary. The data processing includes IRAC and MIPS pipelines and a database for mining the point-source catalogs, which will be released to the community in support of Spitzer proposal cycles 4 and 5. We present initial results on the epoch 1 data for a region near N79 and N83. The MIPS 70 and 160um images of the diffuse dust emission of the N79/N83 region reveal a similar distribution to the gas emissions, especially the HI 21cm emission.
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