FORS spectroscopy of HDFS galaxies

The observations were obtained using the Focal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) on the ESO Very Large Telescope. Thirty-two primary spectroscopic targets in the HST-WFPC2 HDFS were supplemented with galaxies detected in the Infrared Space Observatory's survey of the HDFS and the ESO Imaging Deep Survey to comprise a sample of 100 galaxies for spectroscopic observations.

Based on detections of several emission lines, such as [OII]3727, H{beta} and [OIII]5007, or of other spectroscopic features, we measured accurate redshifts for 50 objects in the central HDFS and flanking fields. The redshift range of the current sample of galaxies is 0.6-1.2, with a median redshift of 1.13 (at I~23.5 not corrected for completeness). The sample is dominated by starburst galaxies with only a small fraction of ellipticals (~10%).