A new H alpha survey of star formation in field spiral and irregular galaxies

I will discuss results from the recently-completed H-alpha Galaxy Survey (HaGS), which resulted in H alpha and broad-band R imaging of 334 star-forming galaxies out to 3000 km/s, selected as an unbiassed subset of the Uppsala Galaxy Catalogue. Initial results from this survey include measuring the type dependence of star formation activity, determination of the effect of the group environment on star formation, normalised to activity in isolated galaxies, and measurement of the total star-formation activity in the local Universe summed over all galaxy types, including dwarf galaxies which have been under-represented in previous studies.