The CNOC2 Field Galaxy Redshift Survey. I. The survey and the catalog for the patch CNOC 0223+00

The Canadian Network for Observational Cosmology (CNOC2) Field Galaxy Redshift Survey is a spectroscopic/photometric survey of faint galaxies over 1.5 deg(2) of sky with a nominal spectroscopic limit of R-C similar to 21.5 mag. The primary goals of the survey are to investigate the evolution of galaxy clustering and galaxy populations over the redshift range of similar to0.1-0.6. The survey area contains four widely separated patches on the sky with a total sample of over 6000 redshifts, representing a sampling rate of about 45%. In addition, five-color photometry (in I-C, R-C, V, B, and U) for a complete sample of approximately 40,000 galaxies to R-C similar to 23.0 mag is also available. We describe the survey and observational strategies, multiobject spectroscopy mask design procedure, and data reduction techniques for creating the spectroscopic-photometric catalogs. We also discuss the derivations of statistical weights, including corrections for the effects of limited spectral bandwidth, for the redshift sample, which allow it to be used as a complete sample. As the initial release of the survey data, we present the full data set and some statistics for the patch CNOC 0223 + 00.