March 23, 2016

UltraVISTA is an Ultra Deep, near-infrared survey with ESO's VISTA surveys telescope. Over the course of 5 years, UltraVISTA is imaging the COSMOS field in 5 bands (Y, J, H, Ks, NB118) and therefore represents a key survey on COSMOS. The 3rd data release (DR3) is now public and can be downloaded on the ESO archive web-page.

The principal difference with respect to the DR2 release is a substantial increase in exposure time in all five bands (by a factor of 1.7-4.6) in the four "ultra-deep stripes" regions, corresponding to an increase in depth of 0.4 to 0.8 magnitudes. The DR3 final magnitudes are 24.8, 24.5, 24.1, 23.8 mag in the deep stripes and 25.7, 25.4, 25.1, 24.9 mag in the ultra-deep stripes for Y, J, H, and Ks band, respectively. The magnitude limit for the narrow-band NB118 observation (only in ultra-deep stripe) is 24.1 magnitudes (AB).

For more information, download the official release document.
The data can be accessed here.

Above: Color composite of the UltraVISTA field on COSMOS.