  We present the SAURON project, which is aimed at studying the morphology,
two-dimensional kinematics and stellar populations of a representative sample
of elliptical galaxies and spiral bulges. SAURON, a dedicated integral-field
spectrograph that is optimized for wide-field observations and has high
throughput, was built in Lyon and is now operated at the WHT 4.2m telescope. At
present, we have observed approximately two thirds of the seventy-two sample
galaxies with SAURON. A comparison with published long-slit measurements
demonstrates that the SAURON-data is of equal or better quality, and provides
full two-dimensional coverage. The velocity and velocity dispersion fields
exhibit a large variety of morphologies: from simple rotating systems to
cylindrical, disky and triaxial velocity fields, bars and decoupled cores. Most
of these kinematical signatures do not have counterparts in the light
distribution. While some galaxies are consistent with axisymmetry, most are
more complex systems than assumed previously. This suggests that the
kinematical properties of nearby E/S0 galaxies do not agree with the often
assumed simplistic two-family model, in which the giant non-rotating triaxial
ellipticals are opposed to the fast-rotating axisymmetric faint ellipticals and
S0s.
