Virac: The Vvv Infrared Astrometric Catalogue

We present VIRAC version 1, a near-infrared proper motion and parallax\ncatalogue of the VISTA VVV survey for 312,587,642 unique sources averaged\nacross all overlapping pawprint and tile images covering 560 deg$^2$ of the\nbulge of the Milky Way and southern disk. The catalogue includes 119 million\nhigh quality proper motion measurements, of which 47 million have statistical\nuncertainties below 1 mas yr$^{-1}$. In the 11$<K_s<$14 magnitude range the\nhigh quality motions have a median uncertainty of 0.67 mas yr$^{-1}$. The\ncatalogue also includes 6,935 sources with quality-controlled 5 $\\sigma$\nparallaxes with a median uncertainty of 1.1 mas. The parallaxes show reasonable\nagreement with the TYCHO-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS), though caution is\nadvised for data with modest significance. The SQL database housing the data is\nmade available via the web. We give example applications for studies of\nGalactic structure, nearby objects (low mass stars and brown dwarfs, subdwarfs,\nwhite dwarfs) and kinematic distance measurements of YSOs. Nearby objects\ndiscovered include LTT 7251 B, an L7 benchmark companion to a G dwarf with over\n20 published elemental abundances, a bright L sub-dwarf, VVV 1256-6202, with\nextremely blue colours and nine new members of the 25 pc sample. We also\ndemonstrate why this catalogue remains useful in the era of Gaia. Future\nversions will be based on profile fitting photometry, use the Gaia absolute\nreference frame and incorporate the longer time baseline of the VVV extended\nsurvey (VVVX).\n