The Nearby Field Galaxy Survey - A spectrophotometric and photometric study of nearby galaxies

We report on our observing programme to obtain integrated spectrophotometry , intermediate- and high-resolution major-axis spectra, and U B R surface p hotometry of a representative sample of similar to 200 galaxies in the near by field. The main goal of this programme is to provide a comparison sample for high-redshift studies and to study the variation in star formation rat es (SFRs), star formation history (SFH), excitation, metallicity, and inter nal kinematics over a wide range of galaxy luminosities and morphological t ypes. In particular, we extend the work of Kennicutt (1992) to lower-lumino sity systems. We present the main results of our analysis so far. In these proceedings, we condense the two atlases presented of 1) images and radial surface brightness profiles and colour profiles, and 2) images and integrat ed spectra into several example images, profiles and spectra, showing the g eneral trends observed. For the original atlases we refer the reader to the electronic distribution on CDROM or as available on the Web at http://www. astro.rug.nl/similar to nfgs/.