New Release of UltraVISTA public survey data via the ESO Science Archive Facility

Published: 21 Mar 2016

New release of UltraVISTA Public Survey data via the ESO Science Archive Facility UltraVISTA is an ultra-deep near-infrared survey of the central region of the COSMOS field. This third UltraVISTA data release comprises stacked images in YJHKs and NB118 narrow-band filters together with a five-band merged catalogue. The principal difference with respect to the DR2 release is a substantial increase in exposure time in all five bands (by a factor of 1.7-4.6) in the four "ultra-deep stripes" regions, corresponding to an increase in depth of 0.4 to 0.8 magnitudes.

The release is based on the observations carried out from December 2009 to May 2014, corresponding to 40250 individual images. The total exposure time contributing to this release is 898 hours, and the total survey area is 1.8 sq.deg. In Ks, the field is covered to a 5 sigma limiting AB magnitude of 24.9 (ultra-deep part) and 23.8 (deep part). Median seeing on all bands is around 0.8’’.

Images can be queried and downloaded from the ESO Science Archive Facility while the band-merged catalogue data, containing 433547 records, are accessible from ESO’s catalogue facility query interface. The UltraVISTA Data Release 3 is accompanied by a comprehensive description.

By accessing the UltraVISTA DR3, the ESO community benefits from joint efforts by ESO, the PIs of the VISTA public survey projects and their collaborators, including the data centers at TERAPIX, Paris, and CASU, Cambridge.