UKIDSS - The Next Generation Near-Infrared Sky Survey

UKIDSS is the next generation of near-infrared surveys, the successor to 2MASS. UKIDSS began in May 2005 and will survey 7500 square degrees of the northern sky, covering both high and low galactic latitudes, from JHK to K=18.3. This depth is three magnitudes deeper than 2MASS. UKIDSS will be the true near-infrared counterpart of the Sloan Survey and will produce a panoramic and sharp atlas of the Milky Way plane. In fact, UKIDSS consists of five surveys, including two deep extragalactic elements, one covering 35 square degrees to K=21 and the other covering 0.77 square degrees to K=23.

The survey instrument is WFCAM on the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. WFCAM has four 2048x2048 Rockwell instruments with a spacing of 94%, and a pixel ratio of 0.4 arc seconds giving an exposed solid angle of 0.21 square degrees.

The four main targets of UKIDSS include: the coolest and nearest brown dwarfs, high-redshift dusty starburst galaxies, elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters at redshift 1‹z‹2, and quasars at the highest redshift (z=7). UKIDSS aims to discover the nearest objects to the Sun (outside the Solar System) as well as some of the most distant objects known in the Universe.

The UKIDSS Consortium consists of about 100 astronomers who design and conduct the survey. Once archived, the data are available to the entire ESO community. Data are released to the world 18 months after each release to ESO.