The primary goals of VINROUGE (Vista Near infra-Red Observations Uncovering Gravitational wave Events, PI N. Tanvir) are to locate and characterize the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave discovered events. This is achieved through wide field, multi-filter (Y, J, Ks) imaging of the error regions with VIRCAM on VISTA. This first data-release contains imaging and catalogues obtained during the follow-up of three gravitational wave triggers during the second LIGO/Virgo science run (O2). These triggers were two black hole mergers GW 170809 and  GW 170814, and the Kilonova transient GW 170817. For the latter, the gravitational wave counterpart was detected and identified as a binary neutron star merger. The observations of the three different fields cover respectively 17 deg², ~27 deg² and 3.5 deg².

Other data products associated with the follow-up of the Kilonova event on 17-08-2017 were previously released on 17 Oct 2017 (VISIR observations) and on 18 Dec 2017 (NaCO) under the Phase 3 collection GW170817.

The VINROUGE DR1 data products are available from the ESO Archive Science Portal or programmatically. More details about the release content can be found in the associated Phase 3 data release description. By accessing the VINROUGE DR1 products, the ESO community benefits from joint efforts by ESO, the PIs of the VISTA public survey projects and their collaborators, including CASU.