The 6dF Galaxy Survey: First data release

The 6dF Galaxy Survey (6dFGS) is currently measuring the redshifts of around 170000 galaxies and the peculiar velocities of a 15000-member sub-sample. It will be the largest redshift survey of the local universe and more than an order of magnitude larger than any peculiar velocity survey to date. When complete, it will cover essentially the entire southern sky around a mean redshift of z = 0.05. Central to the survey is the Six-Degree Field (6dF) multifibre spectrograph, an instrument able to record 150 simultaneous spectra over the 5.7 degrees-field of the UK Schmidt Telescope. Targets have been drawn from the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC) to include all galaxies brighter than K-tot = 12.75, supplemented by 2MASS and SuperCOSMOS galaxies that complete the sample to limits of (H,J,r(F),b(J)) = (13.05,13.75,15.6,16.75). Here we describe the implementation of the survey and the procedures used to select sources and determine redshifts. We also describe early results utilising the First Data Release of similar to 45 000 redshifts. There is an online database of 6dFGS data accessible from the 6dFGS web site (http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/6dFGS).