WFAU, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Description:
The VHS will image the entire ~20 000 square degrees of the Southern Sky, with the exception of the areas already covered by the VIKING and VVV surveys, in J and Ks. The resulting data will be about 4 magnitudes deeper than 2MASS and DENIS. The 5000 square degrees covered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), another imaging survey scheduled to begin in 2010 at the CTIO 4 metre Blanco telescope, will also be observed in H-band. The area around both of the Galactic Caps will be observed in Y- and H- band as well to be combined with the data from the VST ATLAS survey. The main science drivers of the VHS include: examining low mass and nearby stars, studying the merger history of the Galaxy, measuring the properties of Dark Energy through the examination of large-scale structure to a redshift of ~1, and searches for high redshift quasars.
WFAU, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Description:
The VHS will image the entire ~20 000 square degrees of the Southern Sky, with the exception of the areas already covered by the VIKING and VVV surveys, in J and Ks. The resulting data will be about 4 magnitudes deeper than 2MASS and DENIS. The 5000 square degrees covered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), another imaging survey scheduled to begin in 2010 at the CTIO 4 metre Blanco telescope, will also be observed in H-band. The area around both of the Galactic Caps will be observed in Y- and H- band as well to be combined with the data from the VST ATLAS survey. The main science drivers of the VHS include: examining low mass and nearby stars, studying the merger history of the Galaxy, measuring the properties of Dark Energy through the examination of large-scale structure to a redshift of ~1, and searches for high redshift quasars.
WFAU, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Description:
The VHS will image the entire ~20 000 square degrees of the Southern Sky, with the exception of the areas already covered by the VIKING and VVV surveys, in J and Ks. The resulting data will be about 4 magnitudes deeper than 2MASS and DENIS. The 5000 square degrees covered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), another imaging survey scheduled to begin in 2010 at the CTIO 4 metre Blanco telescope, will also be observed in H-band. The area around both of the Galactic Caps will be observed in Y- and H- band as well to be combined with the data from the VST ATLAS survey. The main science drivers of the VHS include: examining low mass and nearby stars, studying the merger history of the Galaxy, measuring the properties of Dark Energy through the examination of large-scale structure to a redshift of ~1, and searches for high redshift quasars.
Charge-coupled device (CCD) photometry in the Johnson V, Kron-Cousins I and Washington CMT1 systems is presented in the field of the poorly known open cluster NGC 2627.
We have obtained CCD photometry in the Johnson V, Kron-Cousins I and CT_1_ Washington systems for NGC 2324, a rich open cluster located ~35{deg} from the Galactic anticentre direction. We measured V magnitudes and V-I colours for 2865 stars and T_1_ magnitudes and C-T_1_ colours for 1815 stars in an area of 13.6'x13.6' (pixel=0.4")
We present the results of the DART imaging and CaII triplet (CaT) survey of the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) at ESO. We collected hundreds of low resolution spectra of Red Giant Branch (RGB) stars in the CaT region, using VLT/FLAMES in Medusa mode, with the GIRAFFE spectrograph (grating LR8, resolving power R~6500). We list the results for the targets with a S/N per Angstrom >10 and an error in velocity <5km/s, because we found this to be the minimum for an accurate determination of velocity and equivalent width. We checked the sample to weed out any spurious object (e.g., broken fibres, background galaxies, foreground stars, spectra not consistent with RGBs). We use a 2.5sigma cut from the system velocity to derive which stars are probable velocity members of the Fornax dSph. We transform the equivalent width of the CaT lines of probable velocity members into metallicity ([Fe/H]) using the relation derived by Rutledge et al. (1997PASP..109..907R) and combining the CaT lines as in Tolstoy et al. (2001MNRAS.327..918T). The errors in [Fe/H] are based on S/N computations and adjusted to agree with repeated measurements.
We present VI CCD photometric observations of about 5500 stars up to a limiting magnitude of V~20 in an area of ~16'x16' around the cluster NGC 6631. The cluster parameters determined for the first time by fitting the theoretical isochrones in the V, (V-I) diagram of the cluster stars are E(V-I)=0.60+/-0.05mag, distance=2.6+/-0.5kpc, age=400+/-100Myr and metallicity, Z=0.05. The cluster diameter determined from the radial density profile is 4.8+-0.5pc. The mass function of the cluster has a slope of 2.1+/-05.
Using H{alpha} grism spectroscopy and optical and Two-Micron All-Sky Survey photometry of the fields containing NGC 1893 and two emission nebulae, Sim 129 and Sim 130, we show the presence of a number of H{alpha} and near-infrared excess sources towards the region between HD 242935 and the two emission nebulae. Among them a large majority of these pre-main-sequence candidate sources are concentrated towards regions closer to Sim 129 and Sim 130.
We present CCD VI_KC_ photometry down to V~21mag in the field of the rich open cluster NGC 2194, which is projected towards the Galactic anticentre direction. We measured V magnitudes and V-I colours for a total of 2515 stars in a field of 13.6x13.6arcmin^2^, supplemented with CCD photometry in the C, M and T_1_ filters of the Washington system and photoelectric CMT_1_T_2_ photometry of 20 red giant candidates, using the 0.9-m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), Chile, on 1997 December 23-24.
We report deep (V~24.0) VI CCD photometry of three fields centred in the regions of the old open clusters Saurer A, B and C. In the case of Saurer A, which is considered one of the oldest known open clusters, we also provide a comparison field.