The multiwavelength survey by Yale-Chile (MUSYC): Survey design and deep public UBVRIZ ' images and catalogs of the extended Hubble Deep Field-South

Abstract

We present UBVRIz' optical images taken with MOSAIC on the CTIO 4 m telescope of the 0.32 deg(2) Extended Hubble Deep Field-South. This is one of four fields comprising the MUSYC survey, which is optimized for the study of galaxies at z=3, active galactic nucleus (AGN) demographics, and Galactic structure. Our methods used for astrometric calibration, weighted image combination, and photometric calibration in AB magnitudes are described. We calculate corrected aperture photometry and its uncertainties and find through tests that these provide a significant improvement upon standard techniques. Our photometric catalog of 62,968 objects is complete to a total magnitude of R-AB=25, with R-band counts consistent with results from the literature. We select z similar or equal to 3 Lyman break galaxy (LBG) candidates from their UVR colors and find a sky surface density of 1.4 arcmin(-2) and an angular correlation function w(theta) (2.3 +/- 1.0)theta(-0.8), consistent with previous findings that high-redshift Lyman break galaxies reside in massive dark matter halos. Our images and catalogs are available online.