Science

Science Goals

The scientific aims of the VISTA Hemisphere Survey cover  a wide range of scientific areas and the medium term goals include:

  • the discovery of very low mass stars and the nearest stars
  • deciphering the merger history of our own Milky Way
  • measurement of the large scale structure of the Universe out to redshifts of one and measuring the properties of the Dark Energy which is widely believed to causing the observed acceleration of the expansion of the Universe
  • discovery of very high redshift quasars with z>7 to understand the epoch of Reionization.

What is VHS:

VHS is a panoramic wide field Infra-Red sky survey, which when combined with other VISTA Public Surveys will result in coverage of the whole southern celestial hemisphere (~19,000 deg2) to a depth 30 times fainter than the 2MASS/DENIS surveys in at least two wavebands (J and K). In the South Galactic Cap, ~4500 deg2 will be imaged deeper, including H band, and will have supplemental deep multiband grizY imaging data provided by the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The remainder of the high galactic latitude sky will be imaged in YJHK to be combined with the VST ATLAS survey.

In addition the survey will provide essential support for the ESA Cornerstone missions; XMM-Newton, Planck, Herschel and GAIA.