UKIDSS

The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey

UKIDSS is the next generation near-infrared sky survey, the successor to 2MASS. UKIDSS will commence in mid 2004 and survey 7500 square degrees of the Northern sky, extending over both high and low Galactic latitudes, in JHK to K=18.5. This depth is three magnitudes deeper than 2MASS. UKIDSS will be the true near-infrared counterpart to the Sloan survey, and will produce as well a panoramic clear atlas of the Galactic plane. In fact UKIDSS is made up of five surveys and includes two deep extra-Galactic elements, one covering 35 square degrees to K=21, and the other reaching K=23 over 0.77 square degrees.

The basic parameters of the 5 surveys are:

1.  Large Area Survey (LAS)         4000 sq. degs K=18.4 extraGalactic 
2.  Galactic Plane Survey (GPS)     1800 sq. degs K=19.0 Galactic 
3.  Galactic Clusters Survey (GCS)  1400 sq. degs K=18.7 Galactic 
4.  Deep Extragalactic Survey (DXS)   35 sq. degs K=21.0 extraGalactic 
5.  Ultra Deep Survey (UDS)         0.77 sq. degs K=23.0 extraGalactic 

The survey instrument is WFCAM on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. The WFCAM design is for four 2048 Rockwell devices at 90% spacing. With a pixel scale of 0.4 arcsec, the exposed solid angle is 0.21 sq. degs. WFCAM as night falls is shown left.

Four of the principal quarry of UKIDSS are: the coolest and nearest brown dwarfs, high-redshift dusty starburst galaxies, elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters at redshifts 1�z�2, and the highest-redshift quasars, at z=7. UKIDSS should discover both the nearest (outside the solar system) and the farthest known objects in the Universe.

The UKIDSS Consortium is a collection of some 70 astronomers who are responsible for the design and execution of the survey. The data become available to the entire ESO community immediately they are entered into the archive, and to the world 18 months later.

The project pages are at http://www.ukidss.org

-- NicholasWalton - 17 Sep 2002