The Local Universe from Calar Alto (LUCA)

Abstract: LUCA (Local Universe from Calar Alto) was conceived as a new generation science program for the Calar Alto Observatory. It proposed the construction of a large Integral Field Unit (IFU) spectrograph with six thousands optical fibers (IFU-6000) at the CAHA 3.5-m telescope to map our universe neighborhood in 3D with an unprecedented spatial resolution. Two galaxy samples were defined to map the local universe: (i) 102 galaxies in the Local Volume, out to 11 Mpc, and (ii) 218 galaxies in the Virgo cluster. A complementary project was developed to map the three largest galaxies in the local universe, M31, M33, and M101 with the Schmidt telescope. In this white paper we describe the LUCA Project science justification and survey strategy, as well as a technical description of the IFU-6000 instrument, its performance, and design.