The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey. VLT/VIMOS Spectroscopy in the GOODS-South Field

Abstract

We present the first results of the VIsible Multiobject Spectrograph (VIMOS) ESO/GOODS program of spectroscopy of faint galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S). The program complements the FORS2 ESO/GOODS campaign. 3312 spectra have been obtained in service mode with VIMOS at the ESO/VLT UT3. The VIMOS LR-Blue and MR grisms have been used to cover different redshift ranges. Galaxies at 1.8 < z < 3.5 have been observed in the GOODS VIMOS-LR-Blue campaign. Galaxies at z < 1 and Lyman Break Galaxies at z > 3.5 have been observed in the VIMOS MR survey. Here we report results for the first 6 masks (out of 10 total) that have been analyzed from each of the LR-Blue and MR grisms. Spectra of 2344 spectra have been extracted from these 6 LR-Blue masks and 968 from 6 MR masks. 33% of the LR-Blue and 18% of the MR spectra are serendipitous observations. We obtained 1481 redshifts in the LR-Blue campaign and 656 in the MR campaign for a total success rate of 63% and 68%, respectively, which increase to 70% and 75% when only the primary targets are considered. By complementing our VIMOS spectroscopic catalog with all existing spectroscopic redshifts publicly available in the CDF-S, we created a redshift master catalog. By comparing this redshift compilation with different photometric redshift catalogs we estimate the completeness level of the CDF-S spectroscopic coverage in several redshift bins. The completeness level is very high, > 60%, at z < 3.5, and it is very uncertain at higher redshift. The master catalog has been used also to estimate completeness and contamination levels of different galaxy photometric selection techniques, such as the BzK, the so called 'sub'-U-dropout and the drop-out methods and to identify large scale structures in the field.