NIBLES: an HI census of SDSS galaxies in the Local Volume

Improving our knowledge of the H I Universe will improve our readiness to use the SKA and its Precursors to their full potential.NIBLES (Nançay Interstellar Baryons Legacy Extragalactic Survey) is a targeted survey of 3000 SDSS galaxies in the Local Volume (900<cz<12,000 km/s) that are distributed evenly over their entire range of total stellar mass (absolute z-band magnitude M z ∼ -13 to -24 mag, for H 0 =70 km s -1 Mpc -1 ).Using mainly the 100-m Nançay Radio Telescope, after 3500 hours of telescope time in the period 2007-2009 it has produced spectra deeper than the blind ALFALFA survey, and it uniformly samples the local galaxy stellar mass distribution.NIBLES will allow us to address a number of outstanding questions in astrophysics, such as: the global baryon budget within the local volume, gas properties as a function of galaxy dynamical mass, stellar mass, and various galaxy morphology parameters.A combination of short initial and longer follow-up observations is expected to yield an overall detection rate of 75%, which appears to be rather independent of galaxy mass and colour -except for the most luminous (M z = -23 to -24), gas-poor ellipticals.NIBLES is an open collaboration and anyone interested in the science and willing to contribute to the project is welcome to join the score of NIBLErS.