iMaNGA: mock MaNGA galaxies based on illustrisTNG to test our theory on galaxy formation and evolution

We developed a method to generate mock galaxies from the hydro-dynamical IllustrisTNG simulations which are suited to compare with integral field spectroscopic observation of galaxies from the SDSS-IV/MaNGA survey (Nanni et al. 2022). We include the same instrumental effects and procedures as adopted in the acquisition and analysis of real SDSS-IV/MaNGA data. Furthermore, we generate the galaxy spectra from the simulations using new stellar population models based on the MaNGA stellar library (MaStar, see http://www.icg.port.ac.uk/MaStar/). In this way, our mock data cubes have the same spatial sampling, cover the same wavelength range, and share the same spectral resolution and flux calibration of real MaNGA galaxy spectra.

Once all observational effects are included, we follow the procedure of the MaNGA Data Analysis Pipeline, to re-bin the data cube, and obtain the kinematics and model emission lines. The binning, kinematics and emission lines, are used to run the full spectral fitting code FIREFLY (https://www.icg.port.ac.uk/firefly/) over the data cubes, as done in other works for real MaNGA observations (see http://www.icg.port.ac.uk/manga-firefly-vac/). 

Data availability