The Kilo-Degree Survey

The VLT Survey Telescope at sunset at Paranal Observatory

KiDS, the Kilo-Degree Survey, is a large optical imaging survey in the Southern sky, designed to tackle some of the most fundamental questions of cosmology and galaxy formation of today. Using the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), located at the ESO Paranal Observatory, KiDS has mapped 1350 square degrees of the night sky in four broad-band filters (u, g, r, i).

Survey overview
Scientific goals

Contact

Email:

kids_at_strw.leidenuniv.nl

Postal address:

KiDS survey
attn: K. H. Kuijken
Sterrewacht Leiden
P.O. Box 9513
NL-2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands

A joint cosmic shear analysis of the Dark Energy Survey and KiDS

19 Sep 2023

KiDS and DES have joined forces to re-analyse the cosmic shear measurements from DES Year 3 and KiDS-1000. Together we defined a Hybrid analysis pipeline, selecting a unified framework for intrinsic alignment models, baryon feedback mitigation strategies, priors, samplers and models of the non-linear matter power spectrum. Our results are consistent with S8 constraints from observations of the cosmic microwave background by Planck, with agreement at the 1.7σ level.

For more information, watch our Cosmology Talk, read our Paper or download the data products.

Cosmology Talk
Scientific paper
Data download page

KiDS-1000 weak lensing data products available

8 Dec 2020

The data products from KiDS-1000, the weak lensing analysis of the KiDS DR4 data, are now available for download. This released data includes the galaxy shapes/photometry catalogue, 2-point shear statistics data vectors and covariance matrices, and parameter posterior samples. For more details and links to the data see the dedicated KiDS-1000 lensing pages, or follow the "Additional data products" link under the "Data access / KiDS DR4" drop-down menu at the top of this page.

KiDS-1000 lensing

The Universe Is More Homogeneous Than Expected

31 Jul 2020

New results from the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) show that the universe is nearly 10 percent more homogeneous than the Standard Model of Cosmology (Λ-CDM) predicts. The latest KiDS map was made with the OmegaCAM on ESO's VLT Survey Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Northern Chile. A group of astronomers led from institutes in the Netherlands, Scotland, England and Germany have described the KiDS-1000 result in five articles, the last three of which appeared online today. They have been submitted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The press release highlighting these results can be found via the Press releases page or the link below.

Press release

  

A zoom-in on a part of the KiDS-1000 density map, showing a patch of the Universe approximately 1.5 x 1 billion lightyears across. The grey square shows the size of an individual KiDS image, with a full moon for scale. Credit: B.Giblin, K.Kuijken and the KiDS team.

KiDS-1000 Cosmology Live Webinar

28 July 2020

We thank everyone for joining the KiDS-1000 Cosmology Webinar! For anyone who missed it, the full Webinar is now available on YouTube. The papers can also be previewed from our from our KiDS-1000 pre-prints page.

Webinar on YouTube
KiDS-1000 pre-prints

How heavy is the Universe?

12 May 2020

Scientific American has published an article titled "How heavy is the Univers? Conflicting Answers Hint at New Physics", based largely on an interview with KiDS co-lead Hendrik Hildebrandt. The article discusses how the tension between the measurements of σ8 from weak lensing surveys such as KiDS and those of the Planck cosmic microwave background results may indicate the standard model of cosmology may be breaking down. There is still a 1% chance this tension is a statistical fluke, and the only way to solve this issue is by increasing the measurement accuracy. The upcoming analysis of the full survey area will allow the KiDS team to do exactly this.

Article in Scientific American

KiDS Data Release 4 available

28 Feb 2019

The fourth public data release (DR4) of KiDS is as now available. This new release supercedes all previous releases and provides reprocessed pixel and catalog data products for a total of 1006 survey tiles, or roughly 1000 square degrees of the sky. New in the DR4 multi-band catalog is the inclusion of near-infrared VIKING data, thus providing photometric measurements for a total of 9 broadband filters (ugriZYJHK). Further details, the release notes, and data access information can be found on the DR4 website.

KiDS DR4 website

First KiDS+VIKING cosmic shear analysis

16 Dec 2018

The first cosmological measurement based on a combination of KiDS (optical) and VIKING (infrared) data has been presented in Hildebrandt et al. (2018). The area (450 sq.deg.), depth, and wavelength coverage of this first KiDS+VIKING data set make it the most extensive optical+infrared data set ever used for lensing measurements. Based on greatly enhanced photometric redshifts and new image simulations (Kannawadi et al. 2018) this analysis updates the KiDS-450 cosmology results from Hildebrandt et al. (2017) and significantly increases the systematic robustness.

KiDS+VIKING-450 paper and data access