ESO imaging survey - Deep public survey: Multi-color optical data for the Chandra Deep Field South

This paper presents multi-passband optical data obtained from observations of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S), located at alpha similar to 3(h)32 (m), delta similar to -27 degrees 48'. The observations were conducted at t he ESO/MPG 2.2 m telescope at La Silla using the 8k x 8k 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 carrie d out as a part of the ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) project. This paper describ es the optical observations, the techniques employed for un-supervised pipe line processing and the general characteristics of the final data set. Imag e processing has been performed using multi-resolution image decomposition techniques adapted to the EIS pipeline. The automatic processing steps incl ude standard de-bias and at-field, automatic removal of satellite tracks, d e-fringing/sky-subtraction, image stacking/mosaicking and astrometry. Stack ing of dithered images is carried out using pixel-based astrometry which en ables the efficient removal of cosmic rays and image defects, yielding rema rkably clean final images. The final astrometric calibration is based on a pre-release of the GSC-II catalog and has an estimated intrinsic accuracy o f less than or similar to 0.10 arcsec, with all passbands sharing the same solution. The paper includes data taken in six different filters (U'U BV RI ). The data cover an area of about 0.25 square degrees reaching 5 sigma lim iting 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 2 x FWHM aperture. The optical data covers an area of similar to0.1 square degrees for which mode rately deep observations in two near-infrared bands are also available, rea ching 5 sigma limiting magnitudes of J(AB) similar to 23.4 and K-AB similar to 22.6. The current optical/infrared data also fully encompass the region of the deep X-ray observations recently completed by the Chandra telescope . The optical data presented here, as well as the infrared data released ea rlier, are publicly available world-wide in the form of fully calibrated pi xel and associated weight maps and source lists extracted in each passband. These data can be requested through the URL "http://www.eso.org/eis".