The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey^*

Public release of 1599 redshifts to I across the Chandra Deep Field South

¹ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille – UMR 6110, OAMP, Université de Provence, Traverse du Siphon-Les trois Lucs, BP 8, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France e-mail: olivier.lefevre@oamp.fr
² IRA-INAF, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
³ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
⁴ IASF-INAF, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
⁵ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées – UMR 5572, 14 avenue E. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁶ Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Astronomia, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
⁷ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris – UMR 7095, 98bis bd Arago, 75014 Paris, France
⁸ Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 1, 85741 Garching, Germany
⁹ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
¹⁰ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, 20121 Milano, Italy
¹¹ Observatoire de Paris, LERMA – UMR 8112, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
¹² INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Salita Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Received: 10 April 2004
Accepted: 6 August 2004

Abstract

This paper presents the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey around the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). We have measured 1599 new redshifts with VIMOS on the European Observatory Very Large Telescope – UT3, in an area arcmin², including 784 redshifts in the Hubble Space Telescope – Advanced Camera for Surveys GOODS area. 30% of all objects with have been observed independently of magnitude, indicating that the sample is purely magnitude limited. We have reached an unprecedented completeness level of 84% in terms of the ratio of secure measurements vs. observed objects, while 95% of all objects have a redshift measurement. A total of 1452 galaxies, 139 stars, 8 QSOs have a redshift identification, 141 of these being unsecure measurements. The redshift distribution down to is peaked at a median redshift , with a significant high redshift tail extending up to ~4. Several high density peaks in the distribution of galaxies are identified. In particular, the strong peak at contains more than 130 galaxies in a velocity range  km s^-1 distributed all across the transverse ~20 h^-1 Mpc of the survey. We are releasing all redshifts to the community, along with the cross identification with HST-ACS GOODS sources on the CENCOS database environment http://cencosw.oamp.fr.