The Fornax spectroscopic survey I. Survey strategy and preliminary results on the redshift distribution of a complete sample of stars and galaxies

The Fornax Spectroscopic Survey will use the Two degree Field spectrograph (2dF) of the Anglo-Australian Telescope to obtain spectra for a complete sample of all 14000 objects with 16.5<=Bj<=19.7 in a 12 square degree area centred on the Fornax Cluster. By selecting all objects---both stars and galaxies---independent of morphology, we cover a much larger range of surface brightness and scale size than previous surveys. In this paper we present results from the first 2dF field. Redshift distributions and velocity structures are shown for all observed objects in the direction of Fornax, including Galactic stars, galaxies in and around the Fornax Cluster, and for the background galaxy population. The velocity data for the stars show the contributions from the different Galactic components, plus a small tail to high velocities. We find no galaxies in the foreground to the cluster in our 2dF field. The Fornax Cluster is clearly defined kinematically. The mean velocity from the 26 cluster members having reliable redshifts is 1560+/-80 km/s. They show a velocity dispersion of 380+/-50 km/s. Large-scale structure can be traced behind the cluster to a redshift beyond z=0.3. Background compact galaxies and low surface brightness galaxies are found to follow the general galaxy distribution