About

The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey, and the SCALE project built on it.

The Survey#

The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS) (Mendes de Oliveira et al., 2019) is observing over 9,000 square degrees of the southern sky with the 0.8 m T80-South telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. With sharp 0.55 arcsec/pixel resolution and typical depths of 20-21 AB mag, its 12-band Javalambre filter system (Cenarro et al., 2019) captures both broad and narrow spectral features, offering a unique window into the physical processes shaping galaxies across cosmic time.

The Project#

S-PLUS Clusters/Groups and their Large-scale Environments (SCALE; Mendes de Oliveira et al. 2026) explores how galaxies grow, evolve, and interact within clusters, groups, and the vast cosmic web that connects them. Using images from the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS), SCALE combines 12-filter optical data with public spectroscopy and high-resolution imaging to reveal the structure and history of galaxies, from dense cluster cores to their outermost regions, extending up to five times the cluster’s virial radius.

References#

Cenarro, A. J., Moles, M., Cristóbal-Hornillos, D., Marín-Franch, A., Ederoclite, A., Varela, J., López-Sanjuan, C., Hernández-Monteagudo, C., Angulo, R. E., Vázquez Ramió, H., Viironen, K., Bonoli, S., Orsi, A. A., Hurier, G., San Roman, I., Greisel, N., Vilella-Rojo, G., Díaz-García, L. A., Logroño-García, R., … Vilchez, J. M. (2019). J-PLUS: The Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 622, A176. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833036
Mendes de Oliveira, C., Ribeiro, T., Schoenell, W., Kanaan, A., Overzier, R. A., Molino, A., Sampedro, L., Coelho, P., Barbosa, C. E., Cortesi, A., Costa-Duarte, M. V., Herpich, F. R., Hernandez-Jimenez, J. A., Placco, V. M., Xavier, H. S., Abramo, L. R., Saito, R. K., Chies-Santos, A. L., Ederoclite, A., … Zaritsky, D. (2019). The Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS): improved SEDs, morphologies, and redshifts with 12 optical filters. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 489(1), 241–267. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz1985