The great observatories origins deep survey^*

VLT/FORS2 spectroscopy in the GOODS-South field: Part III

¹ INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, via G.B. Tiepolo 11, 34143 Trieste, Italy e-mail: vanzella@oats.inaf.it
² National Optical Astronomy Obs., PO Box 26732, Tucson, AZ 85726, USA
³ University of Massachusetts, Department of Astronomy, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA
⁴ ST-ECF, Karl-Schwarzschild Str. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁵ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, Garching 85748, Germany
⁶ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
⁷ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via Frascati 33, 00040 Monteporzio Roma, Italy
⁸ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, MS 169-506, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
⁹ Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA
¹⁰ INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy (Based on observations made at the European Southern Observatory, Paranal, Chile (ESO programme 170.A-0788 ). )

Received: 23 July 2007
Accepted: 22 October 2007

Abstract

Aims.We present the full data set of the spectroscopic campaign of the ESO/GOODS program in the GOODS-South field, obtained with the FORS2 spectrograph at the ESO/VLT.

Methods.Objects were selected as candidates for VLT/FORS2 observations primarily based on the expectation that the detection and measurement of their spectral features would benefit from the high throughput and spectral resolution of FORS2. The reliability of the redshift estimates is assessed using the redshift-magnitude and color-redshift diagrams, and comparing the results with public data.

Results.Including the third part of the spectroscopic campaign (12 masks) to the previous work (26 masks, Vanzella et al. 2005, 2006), 1715 spectra of 1225 individual targets have been analyzed. The actual spectroscopic catalog provides 887 redshift determinations. The typical redshift uncertainty is estimated to be 0.001. Galaxies have been selected adopting different color criteria and using photometric redshifts. The resulting redshift distribution typically spans two domains: from to 2 and to 6.3. The reduced spectra and the derived redshifts are released to the community through the ESO web page http://www.eso.org/science/goods/.