The Nearby Field Galaxy Survey

We report on our observing programme to obtain integrated spectrophotometry, intermediate- and high-resolution major-axis spectra, and UBR surface photometry of a representative sample of ∼ 200galaxies in the nearby 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 rates (SFRs), star formation history (SFH),excitation, metallicity, and internal kinematics over a wide range of galaxy luminosities and morphological types. In particular, we extend the work of Kennicutt (1992) to lower-luminosity 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 integrated spectra into several example images, profiles and spectra, showing the general 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/∼nfgs/. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.