The VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) survey★

Abstract

In this paper we describe the first data release of the the Visible and\nInfrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) Deep Extragalactic Observations\n(VIDEO) survey. VIDEO is a ~12degree^2 survey in the near-infrared Z,Y,J,H and\nK_s bands, specifically designed to enable the evolution of galaxies and large\nstructures to be traced as a function of both epoch and environment from the\npresent day out to z=4, and active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the most massive\ngalaxies up to and into the epoch of reionization. With its depth and area,\nVIDEO will be able to fully explore the period in the Universe where AGN and\nstarburst activity were at their peak and the first galaxy clusters were\nbeginning to virialize. VIDEO therefore offers a unique data set with which to\ninvestigate the interplay between AGN, starbursts and environment, and the role\nof feedback at a time when it was potentially most crucial.\n We provide data over the VIDEO-XMM3 tile, which also covers the\nCanada-France-Hawaii-Telescope Legacy Survey Deep-1 field (CFHTLS-D1). The\nreleased VIDEO data reach a 5-sigma AB-magnitude depth of Z=25.7, Y=24.5,\nJ=24.4, H=24.1 and K_s=23.8 in 2 arcsec diameter apertures (the full depth of\nY=24.6 will be reached within the full integration time in future releases).\nThe data are compared to previous surveys over this field and we find good\nastrometric agreement with the Two-Micron All Sky Survey, and source counts in\nagreement with the recently released UltraVISTA survey data. The addition of\nthe VIDEO data to the CFHTLS-D1 optical data increases the accuracy of\nphotometric redshifts and significantly reduces the fraction of catastrophic\noutliers over the redshift range 0<z<1 from 5.8 to 3.1 per cent in the absence\nof an i-band luminosity prior. (Truncated Abstract)\n