THE 11MPC Hα AND ULTRAVIOLET GALAXY SURVEY

We introduce 11HUGS (11Mpc Hα and Ultraviolet Galaxy Survey), an out- growth of the recently completed 11MPC Survey, a ground-based Hα and R- band imaging program of a volume-limited sample of 367 spiral and irregular galaxies within a distance of 11 Mpc. As such, the 11HUGS galaxies are a complete subset of the 11MPC Survey catalog which avoid the Galactic plane (|b| > 30 ◦ ) and are observable by GALEX. The goal of 11HUGS is to charac- terize the demographics and star formation properties of nearby galaxies, with an emphasis on the dwarf galaxies which dominate the sample population. The data also provide a foundation for follow-up studies of the HII region popu- lations, star formation, chemical abundance, and ISM properties of the galaxy sample. The combination of Hα imaging, which provides snapshots of the on- going star formation, and UV imaging, which traces star formation over a much longer timescale, will yield powerful constraints on the systematic errors in the inferred star formation related quantities.