ESO Imaging Survey. Deep Public Survey: Multi-Color Optical Data for the Chandra Deep Field South

S. Arnouts, B. Vandame, C. Benoist, M. A. T. Groenewegen, L. da Costa, M. Schirmer, R. P. Mignani, R. Slijkhuis, E. Hatziminaoglou, R. Hook, R. Madejsky, C. Rite', A. Wicenec

Published 2001-03-05, updated 2001-09-28Version 3

This paper presents multi-passband optical data obtained from observations of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S), located at alpha ~ 3h 32m, delta ~ -27d 48m. The observations were conducted at the ESO/MPG 2.2m telescope at La Silla using the 8kx8k Wide-Field Imager (WFI). This data set, taken over a period of one year, represents the first field to be completed by the ongoing Deep Public Survey (DPS) being carried out by the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) project. This paper describes the optical observations, the techniques employed for un-supervised pipeline processing and the general characteristics of the final data set. The paper includes data taken in six different filters U'UBVRI. The data cover an area of about 0.25 square degrees reaching 5 sigma limiting magnitudes of U'_AB=26.0, U_AB=25.7, B_AB=26.4$, V_AB=25.4, R_AB=25.5 and I_AB= 24.7 mag, as measured within a 2xFWHM aperture. The optical data covers the area of ~ 0.1