KiDS Data Release 3

Welcome to the webpages dedicated to the third public data release by the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS). KiDS is an ESO public survey carried out with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) and OmegaCAM camera, that will image 1500 square degrees in four filters (u, g, r, i) in single epochs per filter. The survey is designed to be a weak lensing shear tomography survey, and has as its core science driver mapping of the large-scale matter distribution in the universe and constraining the equation-of-state of Dark Energy. Secondary science cases are manifold and range from galaxy evolution to Milky Way structure, and from detection of white dwarfs to high-redshift quasars.

KiDS DR3 contents

This third data release (KiDS-ESO-DR3) consists of:

• calibrated, stacked images and their weights, as well as masks and single-band source lists for 292 survey tiles not previously released.
• a multi-band, aperture-matched source catalog encompassing all survey tiles released in the first three KiDS data releases (440 tiles)

Data access is provided via the ESO science archive, via the Astro-WISE data management system, and via this website.
Please see the Acknowledgements page for how to acknowledge use of data from this release.

Associated data products

The data products in the main data release are complemented by a number of additional data products:

• BPZ photo-z posterior probability distribution functions
• Photometric redshifts based on Machine-Learning techniques
• Weak-lensing shear catalog and lensing-optimized imaging data

Data access varies per data product type, and the relevant information is available on this website.