A new catalog of photometric redshifts in the hubble deep field

Using the newly available infrared images of the Hubble Deep Field in the J , H, and K bands and an optimal photometric method, we have refined a techn ique to estimate the redshifts of 1067 galaxies. A detailed comparison of o ur results with the spectroscopic redshifts in those cases where the latter are available shows that this technique gives very good results for bright enough objects [AB(8140) < 26.0]. From a study of the distribution of resi duals [Delta z(rms)/(1 + z) approximate to 0.1 at all redshifts], we conclu de that the observed errors are mainly due to cosmic variance. This very im portant result allows for the assessment of errors in quantities to be dire ctly or indirectly measured from the catalog. We present some of the statis tical properties of the ensemble of galaxies in the catalog, and we finish by presenting a list of bright high-redshift (z approximate to 5) candidate s extracted from our catalog together with recent spectroscopic redshift de terminations confirming that two of them are at z = 5.34 and z = 5.60.