VVV: The near-IR Milky Way bulge and plane survey^*

¹ ESO, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching b. München, Germany
² Atacama Large Millimeter Array, Alonso de Córdova 3107, Vitacura, Santiago, Chile
³ Dept. Astronomía y Astrofísica, Pontificia Univ. Católica de Chile, Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Santiago, Chile
⁴ Vatican Observatory, Vatican City State V-00120, Italy
⁵ Dept. of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1001, USA
⁶ Centre for Astrophysics Research, Univ. of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK

^a e-mail: mrejkuba@eso.org

Abstract

The ESO public survey “VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea” (VVV) started mapping the inner disk and bulge of our Galaxy with the VISTA 4m telescope in the near-IR in 2010. The planned survey area of 520 deg² is observed in the Z, Y, J, H and Ks filters, and in addition more than 100 epochs of repeated imaging in Ks will be collected over ∼5 years. The final products will be a deep near-IR atlas in five passbands, and catalogue of more than a million variable sources. This public survey will provide data available to the whole community and therefore will enable further studies of the history of the Milky Way, its star cluster evolution, and the population census of the Galactic Bulge and center, as well as the investigations of the star formation regions in the disk.