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Description
We present new optical spectroscopy for 342 R<18 galaxies in the Shapley supercluster (and 198 supplementary galaxies), obtained from 8-h integrations with the AAOmega facility at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We describe the observations and measurements of central velocity dispersion {sigma}, emission-line equivalent widths and absorption-line indices. The distinguishing characteristic of the survey is its coverage of a very wide baseline in velocity dispersion (90 per cent range {sigma}=40-230km/s), while achieving high signal-to-noise ratio throughout (median 60{AA}^-1^ at 5000{AA}). The data quality will enable estimates of Balmer-line ages to better than 20 per cent precision even for the faintest galaxies in the sample. Significant emission at H{alpha} was detected in ~30 per cent of the supercluster galaxies, including ~20 per cent of red-sequence members. Using line-ratio diagnostics, we find that the emission is LINER (low ionization nuclear emission region) like at high luminosity, but driven by star formation in low-luminosity galaxies. To characterize the absorption lines, we use the classical Lick indices in the spectral range 4000-5200{AA}. We introduce a new method for applying resolution corrections to the line-strength indices. We define a subset of galaxies with very low emission contamination, based on the H{alpha} line, and fit the index relations for this subset. The final sample analysed in this paper comprises 232 NFPS-selected galaxies meeting both the emission and the redshift criteria, of which 198 have measured velocity dispersions (i.e. are not unresolved).
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