The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC) is a 37.5 deg², medium-deep, B-band imaging survey obtained with the Wide Field Camera on the INT. The survey region is a long, 35 arcmin wide strip along the equator, covering from 10h 00m to 14h 45m and is fully contained within the regions of both the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

There are 144 WFC pointings and each was observed for a single 750 s exposure (example field), resulting in a limiting central surface brightness of 26 mag/arcsec². Object catalogues have been generated from the imaging data using SExtractor (E. Bertin). These provide a robust, well-defined, catalogue of galaxies in the range 13 < B < 24 mag. Thus the MGC represents a new wide-angle galaxy resource which firmly connects the local and distant universe within a single dataset.

To give an impression of the quality and depth of the MGC, this figure shows galaxy images from the Digitized Sky Survey and SDSS alongside the MGC image of the same galaxy. For local (B < 20 mag) galaxies, the data allow the decomposition of galaxies into disks and bulges and hence provide the level of detail necessary to perform meaningful comparisons with both high-redshift observations and theories of galaxy evolution and formation.

MGCz is an AAT/2dF redshift survey of those B < 20 galaxies (10,095 in total) not already observed by either the 2dFGRS or SDSS, in order to provide redshifts for the full B < 20 sample. Additional (mop-up) observations, particularly for low-surface brightness galaxies, were obtained with Gemini/GMOS, NTT/EMMI, TNG/DOLORES and ANU 2.3m/DBS, resulting in an overall redshift completeness of 96%. The median redshift of this sample is 0.12.

Here are some figures and further explanations describing the survey and a selection of scientific results.