A catalogue of galaxies in the HDF-South: Photometry and structural parameters

We describe the construction of a catalogue of galaxies in the optical fiel d of the Hubble Deep Field South. The HDF-S observations produced WFPC2 ima ges in U, B, V, and I, the version 1 data have been made public on 23 Novem ber 1999. The effective field of view is 4.38 arcmin(2), and the 5 sigma li miting magnitudes (in a FWHM aperture) are 28.87, 29.71, 30.19, 29.58 in th e U, B, V and I bands, respectively. We created a catalogue for each pass-b and (I-814, V-606, B-450, U-300), using simulations to account for incomple teness and spurious sources contamination. Along with photometry in all ban ds, we determined on the I-814-selected catalogue (I-814 < 26) structural p arameters, such as a metric apparent size, derived from the petrosian radiu s, an asymmetry index, light concentration indexes and the mean surface bri ghtness within the petrosian radius.