Behold The Distant Universe!

This past Monday (June 27th), the National Astronomy Meeting – which is hosted by the Royal Astronomy Society – kicked off at the University of Nottingham in the UK. As one of the largest professional conferences in Europe (with over 500 scientists in attendance), this annual meeting is an opportunity for astronomers and scientists from a variety of fields to present that latest in their research.

The UKIDSS Ultra-Deep Survey

Last month I added “UKIDSS” to the acronym database. It’s a really great project.

mollwollfumble said:

Last month I added “UKIDSS” to the acronym database. It’s a really great project.

I first read that as US KIDS

“The UDS is by far the deepest near-infrared survey over such a large, contiguous area (0.8 sq degrees). There is only one other similar survey, which is known as UltraVISTA. It covers a larger area (1.5 sq degree) but is not quite so deep. Together the UDS and UltraVISTA should revolutionize studies of the high-redshift Universe over the next few years.”

I’d heard of UKIDSS but not UltraVISTA, (checks web)
http://ultravista.org/

Third data release (April 2016).
Second data release (Jan 2014).
First data release (Feb 2012)
Over the course of 5 years, UltraVISTA will repeatedly image the COSMOS field in 5 bands:

an ultra-deep broad-band (Y, J, H, Ks) survey (1408hr) covering 0.73 deg²

a deep broad-band (Y, J, H, Ks) survey (212hr) covering the full 1.5deg² field

UltraVISTA is carried out by the VISTA telescope, hiding at Paranal among the bigger telescopes of the Very Large Telescope.