Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 130, 323-332

The ESO Slice Project (ESP) galaxy redshift survey

III. The sample

G. Vettolani ¹ - E. Zucca ^2,1 - R. Merighi ² - M. Mignoli ² - D. Proust ³ - G. Zamorani ^2,1 - A. Cappi ² - L. Guzzo ⁴ - D. Maccagni ⁵ - M. Ramella ⁶ - G.M. Stirpe ² - A. Blanchard ⁷ - V.  Cayatte ³ - C.  Collins ⁸ - H.  MacGillivray ⁹ - S. Maurogordato ^10,3 - R. Scaramella ¹¹ - C. Balkowski ³ - G. Chincarini ^5,12 - P. Felenbok ³

Send offprint request: Elena Zucca
(zucca@astbo1.bo.cnr.it)

1 - Istituto di Radioastronomia del CNR, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
2 - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Zamboni 33, 40126 Bologna, Italy
3 - Observatoire de Paris, DAEC, Unité associée au CNRS, D0173 et à l'Université Paris 7, 5 Place J. Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
4 - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Bianchi 46, 22055 Merate (LC), Italy
5 - Istituto di Fisica Cosmica e Tecnologie Relative, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
6 - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via Tiepolo 11, 34131 Trieste, Italy
7 - Université L. Pasteur, Observatoire Astronomique, 11 rue de l'Université, 67000 Strasbourg, France
8 - Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John-Moores University, Byrom Street, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK
9 - Royal Observatory Edinburgh, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK
10 - CERGA, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, BP. 229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France
11 - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via Osservatorio 2, 00040 Monteporzio Catone (RM), Italy
12 - Università degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano, Italy

Received November 12; accepted December 22, 1997

Abstract:

The ESO Slice Project (ESP) is a galaxy redshift survey extending over about 23 square degrees, in a region near the South Galactic Pole. The survey is $\sim\! 85\%$ complete to the limiting magnitude $b_{\rm J}=19.4$ and consists of 3342 galaxies with redshift determination.
The ESP survey is intermediate between shallow, wide angle samples and very deep, one-dimensional pencil beams; the spanned volume is $\sim 5 \ 10^4$  h^-3 Mpc³ at the sensitivity peak ($z \sim 0.1$).
In this paper we present the description of the observations and of the data reduction, the ESP redshift catalogue and the analysis of the quality of the velocity determinations.

Key words: galaxies: distances and redshifts -- cosmology: observations; large-scale structure of the Universe