VISTA: Visible-Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy

Will Sutherland

What is VISTA?

4m wide-field optical-IR telescope in Chile (Pachon?)
JIF (Joint Infrastructure Fund)
- 300M from Wellcome - biomedical
- 300M from UK Govt - all science
1st round
- 22M for VISTA
- 5M for gravity Waves
- ? optical interferometer
VISTA preliminary design :
- Optical prime-focus : 1.5^ox1.5^o, 50 2Kx4K CCDs
- IR at Cassegrain : 1.0^ox1.0^o in 4 pointings, 9 2Kx2K arrays

VISTA Science

Surveys
- Weak lensing
- Evolution of structure / photometric redshifts
- LSB galaxies
- AXAF / XMM / Planck / FIRST identifications
Rare objects
- Highest-z QSsOs and galaxies
- Brown dwarfs
- Distant halo stars
Variability
- SNe to z ~ 1.5
- Microlensing
- Kuiper belt objects
Schedule
- ~2/3 major surveys
- ~1/3 specific proposals

	Optical	IR
Wide	~5000 sq. deg, g~24	~1500 sq. deg, K~19
Deep	~500 sq. deg, g~25.5	~150 sq. deg, K~21
Ultra-deep	~50 sq. deg, g~27	~10 sq. deg, K~22

Areas : mix of high lat, targeted fields, galactic-plane etc.

VISTA Status

Aim for First Light : late 2003
Consortium : 18 UK universities
Capital cost : ~22M funded
Operations cost : ~750k/yr `underwritten'