The VIRMOS deep imaging survey: I. overview and survey strategy

This paper presents the CFH12K-VIRMOS survey: a deep B, V, R and I imaging survey in four fields totalling more than 17 deg^2, conducted with the 30x40 arcmin^2 field CFH-12K camera. The survey is intended to be a multi-purpose survey used for a variety of science goals, including surveys of very high redshift galaxies and weak lensing studies. Four high galactic latitude fields, each 2x2 deg^2, have been selected along the celestial equator: 0226-04, 1003+01, 1400+05, and 2217+00. The 16 deg^2 of the "wide" survey are covered with exposure times of 2h, 1.5h, 1h, 1h, while the 1.3x1 deg^2 area of the "deep" survey at the center of the 0226-04 field is covered with exposure times of 7h, 4.5h, 3h, 3h, in B,V,R and I respectively. The data is pipeline processed at the Terapix facility at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris to produce large mosaic images. The catalogs produced contain the positions, shape, total and aperture magnitudes for the 2.175 million objects. The depth measured (3sigma in a 3 arc-second aperture) is I_{AB}=24.8 in the ``Wide'' areas, and I_{AB}=25.3 in the deep area. Careful quality control has been applied on the data as described in joint papers. These catalogs are used to select targets for the VIRMOS-VLT Deep Survey, a large spectroscopic survey of the distant universe (Le Fevre et al., 2003). First results from the CFH12K-VIRMOS survey have been published on weak lensing (e.g. van Waerbeke & Mellier 2003). Catalogs and images are available through the VIRMOS database environment under Oracle ({\tt http://www.oamp.fr/virmos}). They will be open for general use on July 1st, 2003.