DENIS is a European astronomical project conducted at the 1 m ESO telescope at La Silla Observatory. The DENIS consortium gathers 20 astronomical institutes together.

The goal is to survey the whole southern sky simultaneously in 3 photometric bands, located in the near-infrared, namely I (0.8 micron), J (1.2 micron) and Ks (2.15 micron). This will fill the missing step between optical surveys on Schmidt plates and the far-infrared IRAS survey.

The survey consists of 5112 strips of 30 degrees length (in declination), made of 180 individual images of 12'x12'. Overlap between adjacent fields and strips is 2'. Sky is scanned in a step-and-stare mode, with an integration time per field of 9 seconds. Pixel size corresponds to 1" in I and 3" in J and Ks.

Astronomical returns mainly concern highly absorbed regions (star formation regions, galactic bulge, galaxies at low galactic latitude), and cool stars (brown dwarfs, M dwarfs, AGB stars, young stellar objects).

Two main products will be delivered by the DENIS data analysis centers: a set of 10^6 images in three colours (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris), and a catalogue of 10^9 sources (Leiden Observatory).

Astrometric accuracy is 0.3", and photometric accuracy for bright stars is about 0.01 mag in I and 0.02 mag in J and Ks. Limiting magnitudes are 18 in I, 16.5 in J and 14 in Ks.

For a more detailed description and nice images, visit the DENIS sites at Meudon, IAP and Leiden.

The DENIS project is supported by the SCIENCE and the HCM plans of the European Commission under grants CT920791 and CT940627, by INSU, MEN and CNRS in France, by the State of Baden-Wurtemberg in Germany, by DGICYT in Spain, by CNR in Italy, by FFwFBWF in Austria, by FAPESP in Brazil, by OTKA grants F-4239 and F-013990 in Hungary, and by the ESO C&EE grant A-04-046.