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We present the first release of the MaNGA Stellar Library (MaStar), which is a large, well-calibrated, high-quality empirical library covering the wavelength range 3622-10354 Å at a resolving power of R ∼ 1800. The spectra were obtained using the same instrument as used by the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) project, by piggybacking on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV)/Apache Point Observatory Galaxy Evolution Experiment 2-N (APOGEE-2N) observations. Compared to previous empirical libraries, the MaStar library will have a higher number of stars and a more comprehensive stellar-parameter coverage, especially of cool dwarfs, low-metallicity stars, and stars with different [α/Fe], achieved by a sophisticated target-selection strategy that takes advantage of stellar-parameter catalogs from the literature. This empirical library will provide a new basis for stellar-population synthesis and is particularly well suited for stellar-population analysis of MaNGA galaxies. The first version of the library contains 8646 high-quality per-visit spectra for 3321 unique stars. Compared to photometry, the relative flux calibration of the library is accurate to 3.9% in g-r, 2.7% in r-i, and 2.2% in i-z. The data are released as part of SDSS Data Release 15. We expect the final release of the library to contain more than 10,000 stars.

We report the stellar atmospheric parameters for 7503 spectra contained in the first release of the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory survey (MaNGA) stellar library (MaStar) in Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR15. The first release of MaStar contains 8646 spectra measured from 3321 unique stars, each covering the wavelength range 3622–10354 Å with a resolving power of R ∼ 1800. In this work, we first determined the basic stellar parameters: effective temperature (Teff), surface gravity (log g), and metallicity ([Fe/H]), which best fit the data using an empirical interpolator based on the Medium-resolution Isaac Newton Telescope library of empirical spectra (MILES), as implemented by the University of Lyon Spectroscopic analysis Software package. While we analyzed all 8646 spectra from the first release of MaStar, since MaStar has a wider parameter-space coverage than MILES, not all of these fits are robust. In addition, not all parameter regions covered by MILES yield robust results, likely due to the nonuniform coverage of the parameter space by MILES. We tested the robustness of the method using the MILES spectra itself and identified a proxy based on the local density of the training set. With this proxy, we identified 7503 MaStar spectra with robust fitting results. They cover the range from 3179 to 20,517 K in effective temperature (Teff), from 0.40 to 5.0 in surface gravity (log g), and from −2.49 to +0.73 in metallicity ([Fe/H]). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]