The INT wide field imaging survey (WFS)

The 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) is currently bring used to carry out a major multi-colour, multi-epoch wide field CCD based survey over an area of similar to 100 deg(2). The survey parameters have been chosen to maximise scientific return over a wide range of scientific areas and to complement other surveys being carried out elsewhere. Unique aspects of the survey are that it concentrates on regions of sky that are easily accessible from telescopes in both Northern and Southern terrestrial hemispheres and that it is the first public survey to use tilters similar to that bring used by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A major aim of the the INT Wide Field Survey programme is to bridge the gap between the all-sky photographic 2 band surveys such us Palomar and UK Schmidt sky surveys and the ultra-deep keyhole survey such as the Hubble Deep Field. Apart from the science that can be derived directly from the optical data. the datasets will provide ideal target lists for multi-object follow-up with fibre and slit based systems (e.g. GMOS, 2DF, WYFFOS, FMOS) on 4 m and 8 m class telescopes. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.