The VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS) data release 1

TL;DR

The VEGAS DR1 provides deep, multi-band imaging of 10 galaxy groups and clusters, enabling detailed studies of galaxy outskirts, intra-cluster light, globular clusters, and ultra-diffuse galaxies at very faint surface brightness levels.

Contribution

This is the first data release of VEGAS, offering high-quality mosaics that facilitate new research on galaxy structure, formation, and low-surface brightness features.

Findings

Detection of intra-cluster light and faint features

Estimation of stellar halo mass assembly

Identification of ultra-diffuse galaxies

Abstract

We present the first data release (DR1) of the VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey (VEGAS). This is a deep multi-band (u'g'r'i') imaging survey, carried out with the ESO VLT Survey Telescope (VST). To date, using about 90% of the total observing time, VEGAS has already collected 43 targets (groups and clusters of galaxies) covering a total area on the sky of about 95 square degrees. Taking advantage of the wide (1 deg^2) field-of-view of OmegaCAM@VST, the long integration time and the wide variety of targets, VEGAS has proven to be a gold mine to explore the structure of galaxies down to the faintest surface brightness levels of about 27-30 mag/arcsec^2 in the SDSS g' band, for the dense clusters of galaxies and for the unexplored poor groups of galaxies. Based on the analysed data, VEGAS allowed us to i) study the galaxy outskirts, detect the intra-cluster light and low-surface brightness features in the intra-cluster/group space, ii) trace the mass assembly in galaxies, by estimating the accreted mass fraction in the stellar halos and provide results that can be directly compared with the predictions of galaxy formation models, iii) trace the spatial distribution of candidate globular clusters, and iv) detect the ultra-diffuse galaxies. With the DR1, we provide the reduced VST mosaics of 10 targets, which have been presented in the VEGAS publications. The data products are available via the ESO Science Portal (see http://www.eso.org/sci/observing/phase3/news.html#VEGAS-DR1).