Exploring the Universe via the Wide, Deep Near-infrared Imaging ESO Public Survey SHARKS

The Messenger 187 | 2022 (SHARKS; PI: H. Dannerbauer; 198.A2006) was approved as a secondgeneration survey with the 4-metre nearIRoptimised Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) and its near-IR, wide-field imager the VISTA InfraRed CAMera (VIRCAM) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. In total, the survey was granted 1200 hours planned initially over four years. The overall survey covers 300 square degrees down to a 5-sigma limit of Ks = 22.7 mag (AB-system, 2-arcsecond aperture) and will detect a total of approximately 20 million sources. Already more than 90% of the data has been taken since autumn 2016 and it is expected that the observations will be completed by the end of 2022. The SHARKS team is an international collaboration of more than 50 researchers, whose expertise covers all aspects related to the full and successful exploitation of the SHARKS dataset.