The Spitzer Interacting Galaxies Study

The Spitzer Interacting Galaxies Study is a multiwavelength survey of 110 nearby] galaxies in 49 interacting systems, aiming to address the interplay between galaxy interactions, star-formation and AGN activity. Our sample is drawn from the spectroscopic sample of Keel & Kennicutt (1985), which has the main advantage that is not selected on the basis of morphology, but based on galaxy separation and group membership. The Spitzer data will provide complete IRAC and 3-band MIPS maps for all systems as well as IRS spectroscopy of their nuclear regions, and are supplemented by ground based near-IR, radio and optical data. We discuss the sample selection, the observing strategy, and our analysis and interpretation tools. Finally, we present preliminary results from the analysis of the first datasets.