The INT Wide Field Imaging Survey ( WFS )

The 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope(INT) is currently being used to carry out a major multi-colour, multi-epoch, CCD based wide field survey over an area of ∼100deg 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 is that it concentrates on regions of sky that are easily accessible from telescopes in both Northern and Southern terrestrial hemispheres and that it the first public survey to use filters similar to that being used by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A major aim of the the INT Wide Field Survey program is to bridge the gap between the all-sky photographic 2 and 3 band surveys such as the Palomar and UK Schmidt sky surveys and the ultra-deep keyhole surveys such as the Hubble Deep Field(Williams et al, 1996). Apart for the science that can be derived directly from the optical data, the datasets will provide ideal targets lists for multi-object followup with fibre and slit based systems(eg GMOS, 2DF, WYYFOS, FMOS) based systems on 4m and 8m class telescopes.