Hopkins et al. describe the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey being conducted with ASKAP. EMU aims to deliver the touchstone radio atlas of the southern hemisphere. The paper introduces EMU and reviews its science drivers and key science goals. The development of the survey strategy and planned sky coverage is presented, along with the operational aspects of the survey and associated data analysis, together with a selection of diagnostics demonstrating the imaging quality and data characteristics.

The image above is a demonstration of the exquisite ancillary data available for the nearby spiral galaxy M83. The filters used to create each colour image are indicated on the bottom. The size of the panels were matched to the TYPHOON survey field-of-view (orange box; third panel), which is ∼100–1000× larger relative to other optical integral field spectroscopic instruments (smaller boxes). The ASKAP/EMU data (seventh panel) are from a single 5-hour observing block (half of the total final integration time). Similar nearby galaxies with extensive multi-wavelength photometry and spectroscopy offer a unique opportunity for spatially resolved comparisons between all baryonic components within galaxies (stars, ionised gas, molecular gas, atomic gas, and dust).