Near Infrared (NIR) surveys

Phil Lucas is head of the UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Galactic Plane Survey (GPS) implementation group and co-Principal Investigator of the VISTA survey "VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea" (VVV).

The (UKIDSS) Galactic Plane Survey (GPS) is surveying 1800 square degrees of the northern and equatorial Galactic plane at latitudes -5

Left: The Wide Field Camera (long black tube) on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Right: Central region of the full WFCAM tile, showing dramatic clouds of gas and dust illuminated by stars in the southern half of the Orion nebula. This is an image at three infrared wavelengths (red represents narrow-band emission from molecular hydrogen gas at 2.12 microns, green represents K-band emission at 2.2 microns, and blue represents J-band emission at 1.25 microns). The region is 11 light years across.

The VVV survey is a public synoptic survey of 1 billion stars in a 520 square degree area of the Galactic Bulge and the adjacent southern mid-plane. It is a joint Chilean/European collaboration using the 4-m ESO VISTA telescope. The area includes the 150 square degree Spitzer GLIMPSE-South and GLIMPSE-II mid-IR survey regions. It will provide a single epoch of imaging in the ZYJHKs passbands, followed by 80 epochs of Ks band imaging. It is designed to detect and characterise all stars that vary on timescale between a day and several weeks. It will focus in particular on RR Lyrae variables in the Bulge and Cepheid variables in the plane, and use these to map the structure of the Bulge and the galactic spiral arms in 3-D. The data will also enable star formation studies similar to those of the UKIDSS GPS, but with the advantage that the variability data will detect the more evolved pre-main sequence stars that are not identified by the GPS or by mid-IR imaging. VVV is the largest synoptic survey to date.