UltraVISTA is an ultra-deep VISTA near-infrared Public Survey of the central region of the COSMOS field. This third UltraVISTA data release (DR3) comprises stacked images in YJHKs and NB118 narrow-band filters together with a five-band merged catalogue. The principal difference with respect to the previous DR2 release is a substantial increase in exposure time in all five bands (by a factor of 1.7–4.6) in the four "ultra-deep stripes" regions, corresponding to an increase in depth of 0.4 – 0.8 mag.
New Release of UltraVISTA Public Survey Data
Published: 23 Mar 2016
The release is based on the observations carried out from December 2009 to May 2014, corresponding to 40250 individual images. The total exposure time contributing to this release is 898 hours, and the total survey area is 1.8 square degrees. In Ks, the field is covered to a 5σ limiting AB mag of 24.9 (ultra-deep part) and 23.8 (deep part). Median seeing in all bands is around 0.8 arcseconds.
Images can be queried and downloaded from the Science Archive Facility, while the band-merged catalogue data, containing 433547 records, are accessible from the catalogue facility query interface. The UltraVISTA DR3 is accompanied by a comprehensive description.
By accessing UltraVISTA DR3, the community benefits from the joint efforts by ESO, the PI's of the VISTA public survey projects and their collaborators, including the data centres at TERAPIX and CASU.