DEEP U BAND AND R IMAGING OF GOODS-SOUTH: OBSERVATIONS, DATA REDUCTION AND FIRST RESULTS

We present deep imaging in the U band covering an area of 630 arcmin(2) centered on the southern field of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). The data were obtained with the VIMOS instrument at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope. The final images reach a magnitude limit U-lim approximate to 29.8 (AB, 1 sigma, in a 1 '' radius aperture), and have good image quality, with full width at half-maximum approximate to 0 ''.8. They are significantly deeper than previous U-band images available for the GOODS fields, and better match the sensitivity of other multiwavelength GOODS photometry. The deeper U-band data yield significantly improved photometric redshifts, especially in key redshift ranges such as 2 < z < 4, and deeper color-selected galaxy samples, e.g., Lyman break galaxies at z approximate to 3. We also present the co-addition of archival ESO VIMOS R-band data, with R-lim approximate to 29 (AB, 1 sigma, 1 '' radius aperture), and image quality approximate to 0 ''.75. We discuss the strategies for the observations and data reduction, and present the first results from the analysis of the co-added images