First release of multi-band source catalogue data resulting from the VST Public Survey ATLAS published

Published: 17 Nov 2015

The ESO/VST Public Survey ATLAS is targeting 4500 square degrees of the Southern sky in five filters u,g,r,i,z to depths comparable to those of the SDSS. This survey is also complemented by near-infrared data from the VISTA Hemisphere and VIKING surveys.

The catalogue was extracted from the reduced images which have been released in September 2015 and covers the time from the start of observations by VST in August 2011 through to end September 2013. The sky coverage is ~2000-3000 sq. degrees of sky depending on the band. The multi-band source catalogue contains 87 million entries. The catalogue was produced by the Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) at Edinburgh.

The new catalogue data are accessible from ESO's catalogue facility query interface, and are accompanied by a comprehensive release description.