The Fornax Deep SUrvey with VST

(FDS)

About the 30% of the VEGAS observing time was dedicated to the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS).

FDS is a new multi-band deep survey of the Fornax cluster. FDS is a joint project based on the GTO survey FOrnax Cluster Ultra deep Survey (FOCUS, P.I. R. Peletier) and VEGAS (P.I. E. Iodice). 

I am leading FDS for the Italian GTO partnership. 

The data acquisition was completed in November 2017 and data reduction was completed in 2018. FDS covers the whole Fornax cluster out to the virial radius, with an area of about 26 square degrees around the central galaxy NGC1399, including the SW subgroup centred on the other bright cluster member NGC1316. In this project I am leading the study of the galaxy structure and the faint stellar halo through the imaging analysis. 

With FDS we 

1- mapped the surface brightness around NGC1399 and NGC1316 out to an unprecedented distance of ~200 kpc and down to μg = 29 − 31 mag/arcsec^2; 

2- traced the spatial distribution of candidate GCs inside ~0.5 deg^2 of the cluster core; 

3- studied the galaxy outskirts, detected ICL and faint (μg ~ 28 − 30 mag/arcsec^2) features in the intra-cluster region; 

4- provided the largest size and magnitude limited catalog of dwarf galaxies in the cluster.