The fingerprint of a galactic nucleus: a 0.2"-resolution JHK imaging survey of the centre of the Milky Way

The GALACTICNUCLEUS (GNS) survey is a single-epoch catalog of the Galactic Centre in the near-infrared bands JHKs. The observations were optimised for the Galactic Center: high angular resolution (0.2") to overcome extreme crowding and high dynamic range to minimise saturation issues. The data were acquired with the HAWK-I intrument at the ESO VLT unit telescope 4. The catalogue covers an area of ~0.3 square degrees (~6000 square pc) distributed across seven regions that correspond to the nuclear stellar disc (NSD), the inner Galactic Bulge and the transition region between them. In this catalogue data release, we present accurate PSF photometry of about 3.3 million stars, detecting around 20% in J, 65% in H and 90% in Ks. The catalogue reaches 5-sigma detections for J~22, H~21 and Ks~21 mag. Photometric uncertainties are below 0.05 mag at J~21, H~19 and Ks~18 mag. The zero point was calibrated using the SIRIUS/IRSF catatlogue (Nagayama et al 2004; Nishiyama et al 2006 ), with a systematic uncertainty of 0.04 mag in all three bands.

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When using these data, please reference the following publications: Nogueras-Lara et al., A&amp;A, 610, A83 (2018) and Nogueras-Lara et al., A&amp;A, 631, A20 (2019).