The first and second data releases of the Kilo-Degree Survey
Creators: name: de Jong, Jelte T. A.
name: Kleijn, Gijs A. Verdoes
name: Boxhoorn, Danny R.
name: Buddelmeijer, Hugo
name: Capaccioli, Massimo
name: Getman, Fedor
name: Grado, Aniello
name: Helmich, Ewout
name: Huang, Zhuoyi
name: Irisarri, Nancy
name: Kuijken, Konrad
name: La Barbera, Francesco
name: McFarland, John P.
name: Napolitano, Nicola R.
name: Radovich, Mario
name: Sikkema, Gert
name: Valentijn, Edwin A.
name: Begeman, Kor G.
name: Brescia, Massimo
name: Cavuoti, Stefano
name: Choi, Ami
name: Cordes, Oliver-Mark
name: Covone, Giovanni
name: Dall'Ora, Massimo
name: Hildebrandt, Hendrik
name: Longo, Giuseppe
name: Nakajima, Reiko
name: Paolillo, Maurizio
name: Puddu, Emanuella
name: Rifatto, Agatino
name: Tortora, Crescenzo
name: van Uitert, Edo
name: Buddendiek, Axel
name: Harnois-Déraps, Joachim
name: Erben, Thomas
name: Eriksen, Martin B.
name: Heymans, Catherine
name: Hoekstra, Henk
name: Joachimi, Benjamin
name: Kitching, Thomas D.
name: Klaes, Dominik
name: Koopmans, Léon V. E.
name: Köhlinger, Fabian
name: Roy, Nivya
name: Sifon, Cristóbal
name: Schneider, Peter
name: Sutherland, Will J.
name: Viola, Massimo
name: Vriend, Willem-Jan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an optical wide-field imaging survey carried out with the VLT Survey Telescope and the OmegaCAM camera. KiDS will image 1500 square degrees in four filters (ugri), and together with its near-infrared counterpart VIKING will produce deep photometry in nine bands. Designed for weak lensing shape and photometric redshift measurements, the core science driver of the survey is mapping the large-scale matter distribution in the Universe back to a redshift of ~0.5. Secondary science cases are manifold, covering topics such as galaxy evolution, Milky Way structure, and the detection of high-redshift clusters and quasars. KiDS is an ESO Public Survey and dedicated to serving the astronomical community with high-quality data products derived from the survey data, as well as with calibration data. Public data releases will be made on a yearly basis, the first two of which are presented here. For a total of 148 survey tiles (~160 sq.deg.) astrometrically and photometrically calibrated, coadded ugri images have been released, accompanied by weight maps, masks, source lists, and a multi-band source catalog. A dedicated pipeline and data management system based on the Astro-WISE software system, combined with newly developed masking and source classification software, is used for the data production of the data products described here. The achieved data quality and early science projects based on the data products in the first two data releases are reviewed in order to validate the survey data. Early scientific results include the detection of nine high-z QSOs, fifteen candidate strong gravitational lenses, high-quality photometric redshifts and galaxy structural parameters for hundreds of thousands of galaxies. (Abridged)
description: 26 pages, 26 figures, 2 appendices; two new figures, several textual clarifications, updated references; accepted for publication in A&amp;A