The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey. Public release of 1599 redshifts to IAB≤24 across the Chandra Deep Field South

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 21 × 21.6 arcmin², including 784 redshifts in the Hubble Space Telescope - Advanced Camera for Surveys GOODS area. 30% of all objects with I_AB=24 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 I_AB=24 is peaked at a median redshift z=0.73, 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 z=0.735 contains more than 130 galaxies in a velocity range ±2000 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.

The data presented in this paper has been obtained with the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope, Paranal, Chile.