Galaxy Evolution Within the Kilo-Degree Survey

Abstract

The ESO Public Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an optical wide-field imaging survey carried out with the VLT Survey Telescope and the OmegaCAM camera. KiDS will scan 1,500 deg<SUP>2</SUP> in four optical filters (u, g, r, i). Designed to be a weak lensing survey, it is ideal for galaxy evolution studies, thanks to the high spatial resolution of VST, the excellent seeing and the photometric depth. The surface photometry has provided with structural parameters (e.g. size and Sérsic index), aperture and total magnitudes have been used to obtain photometric redshifts from Machine Learning methods and stellar masses/luminositites from stellar population synthesis. Our project aimed at investigating the evolution of the colour and structural properties of galaxies with mass and environment up to redshift z ∼ 0.5 and more, to put constraints on galaxy evolution processes, as galaxy mergers.