SIMLA: The Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph Mapping Legacy Archive

Abstract We present the Spitzer/IRS Mapping Legacy Archive (SIMLA); a complete set of mid-infrared spectral cubes built from low-resolution mapping-mode fixed-target observations from the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS; 5.2–38 μ m, R ∼ 60–130). Contained in this dataset are spectral maps for several hundred spatially resolved and unresolved objects, including galaxies, molecular clouds, supernova remnants, H ii regions, and more. Each cube has been carefully treated to remove astronomical foregrounds and backgrounds and detector effects using a novel pipeline. Cube assembly was facilitated by the CUBISM code, which included automatic detection and removal of bad pixels. We describe the SIMLA pipeline for reducing and validating the cubes, and we show that synthetic photometry derived from SIMLA spectra and corresponding Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer photometry typically agree within a few percent. SIMLA products and documentation related to their use are available at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (doi: 10.26131/IRSA655 ).