The KMOS Spectroscopic Public Surveys

Published: 09 Feb 2026
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Following the ESO Scientific and Technical Committee recommendation, the process started in 2024 with the call, selection and approval of the KMOS Spectroscopic Public Surveys is now completed and resulted in two public survey projects, EMPOWER (extragalactic) and VVVX-GalCen Spectroscopic survey (galactic). These two surveys are now starting their data acquisition since January 2026 and will collect data over the next three years. The approved survey management plans detailing the observing strategies, data reductions and data releases are published on the ESO web pages.

Key features of each survey are presented in the figures above. The figure on the left shows the redshift distribution of IFU (in black) and existing and upcoming spectroscopic surveys (in colour). The EMPOWER redshift slices are indicated by the orange regions. The solid orange line indicates the evolution of the cosmic star-formation rate density.

The figure on the right shows the VVVX-GalCen Spectroscopic Survey targets for high-priority observations from different science areas (labelled 1 to 6), distributed along RA. Area 6 has a total of 40,000 targets. Its histogram has been shrunk by a factor of 50 for visualisation purposes