First catalogue data release providing the weak lensing shear measurements obtained from the KiDS DR3 images
The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an ESO public survey carried out at the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) with the OmegaCAM camera. It is designed to be a weak lensing shear tomography survey and its core science drivers are to map the large scale matter distribution in the universe and constrain the equation of state of Dark Energy. The catalogue that is now released is the first weak lensing shear dataset from KiDS with which these questions have been addressed.
It is based on 454 tiles and the total area covered is 449.7 square degrees. It provides information regarding galaxy shapes, photometry and photometric redshift for about 14.7 million sources. See the dedicated press release and the KiDS DR3 documentation related to the images and products on which the weak lensing shear measurements are carried out.
The new catalogue is accessible from the ESO catalogue facility query interface, and is accompanied by a comprehensive release description.