The first data release of the Fornax Deep Survey with VST (FDS, Venhola et al., 2018, A&A, 620, 165) is now available on the ESO archive.

This consists of 97 high quality images (and of the corresponding weight maps) obtained by stacking u’, g’, r’, and i’-bands data collected with OmegaCAM on the VST from February 2013 to November 2017.

With exposure times ranging from 2 to 12 hours over an area of ~28 square degrees, this survey is a legacy data-set for studies of members of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster and the infalling Fornax A Group down to a surface brightness limit of ~28 mag/arcsec² (1-sigma surface brightness over a 1 arcsecond² area) and opens a new parameter regime to investigate the role of the cluster environment in shaping the properties of its galaxy population.

In these release, 181 Gb of (compressed) fits files reduced using the AstroWISE system are present. Catalogues with the complete sample of sources including dwarf galaxies part of the cluster, globular clusters, and background galaxies will be provided in forthcoming releases.

More information about the release content can be found in the accompanying documentation. The products are available via the Science Portal or programmatically.