UKIDSS-DR8 LAS, GCS and DXS Surveys (Lawrence+ 2012)

The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) is a large-scale near-IRsurvey which aim is to cover 7500 square degrees of the Northern sky.The survey is carried out using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM), with afield of view of 0.21 square degrees, mounted on the 3.8m United KingdomInfra-red Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. The project comprises five surveys (LAS, GCS, DXS, GPS and UDS).The Large Area Survey (LAS) covers an area of 4000 square degrees in high Galactic latitudes (extragalactic) in the four bands Y(1.0um)J(1.2um) H(1.6um) and K(2.2um) to a depth of K=18.4.The Galactic Clusters Survey (GCS) aims to survey ten large open starclusters and star formation associations, covering a total of 1067square degrees in the five bands Z (0.9um), Y(1.0um) J(1.2um) H(1.6um)and K(2.2um), plus a second pass in K for proper motions, to a depth ofZ=20.4, Y=20.3, J=19.5, H=18.6, K=18.6.The Deep Extragalactic Survey (DXS) aims to map 35 square degrees of skyto a 5-σ point-source sensitivity of J=22.3 and K=20.8 in four carefully selected, multi-wavelength survey areas. The central regions of each field will also be mapped to H=21.8. The primary aim of the survey is to produce a photometric galaxy sample at a redshift of 1-2,within a volume comparable to that of the SDSS, selected in the same passband (rest frame optical).Details of the surveys can be found in the in the paper by Lawrence etal. (2007MNRAS.379.1599L), and at the UKIDSS Surveys site(http://www.ukidss.org/surveys/surveys.html). The data described here represent a subset of the UKIDSS data, limited to the public data and most representative columns. In the "Byte-by-byte Description" below the original names of the columns are given as bracketed names.(3 data files).