Stellar Populations and the Star Formation Histories of LSB Galaxies: I.
  Optical and H-alpha Imaging
  This paper presents optical and H-alpha imaging for a large sample of LSB
galaxies selected from the PSS-II catalogs (Schombert et. al 1992). As noted in
previous work, LSB galaxies span a range of luminosities (-10 > M_V > -20) and
sizes (0.3 kpc < R_V25 < 10 kpc), although they are consistent in their
irregular morphology. Their H-alpha luminosities (L(H-alpha) range from 10^36
to 10^41 ergs s^-1 (corresponding to a range in star formation, using canonical
prescriptions, from 10^-5 to 1 M_solar yr^-1). Although their optical colors
are at the extreme blue edge for galaxies, they are similar to the colors of
dwarf galaxies (van Zee 2001) and gas-rich irregulars (Hunter & Elmegreen
2006). However, their star formation rates per unit stellar mass are a factor
of ten less than other galaxies of the same baryonic mass, indicating that they
are not simply quiescent versions of more active star forming galaxies. This
paper presents the data, reduction techniques and new philosophy of data
storage and presentation. Later papers in this series will explore the stellar
population and star formation history of LSB galaxies using this dataset.
