The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS)

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  • 20 April 2006
Abstract
We describe the goals, design, and implementation of the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS), a seven year sky survey which began in May 2005. It is a portfolio of five survey components covering various combinations of the filter set ZYJHK and H_2. The Large Area Survey, the Galactic Cluster Survey, and the Galactic Plane Survey cover approximately 7000 square degrees to a depth of K~18; the Deep Extragalactic Survey covers 35 square degrees to K~21, and the Ultra Deep Survey covers 0.77 square degrees to K~23. The prime aim of UKIDSS is to provide a long term astronomical legacy database; the design is however driven by a series of specific goals -- for example to find the nearest and faintest sub-stellar objects; to break the z=7 quasar barrier; to determine the epoch of re-ionisation; to determine the substellar mass function; to discover Population II brown dwarfs, if they exist; to measure the growth of structure from z=3 to the present day; to determine the epoch of spheroid formation; and to map the Milky Way through the dust, to several kpc. The data are being made available in a series of staged releases, the first of which (the "Early Data Release (EDR)") is described in Dye et al (2006). The data are immediately public to astronomers in all ESO member states, and available to the world after eighteen months. Before the formal survey began, UKIRT and the UKIDSS consortium collaborated in obtaining and analysing a series of small science verification (SV) projects to complete the commissioning of the camera. We show some results from these SV projects in order to demonstrate the likely power of the eventual complete survey.

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