SIMBAD references

In this paper we describe the U-band imaging of the F02 deep field, one of the fields in the VIRMOS Deep Imaging Survey. The observations were done at the ESO/MPG 2.2m telescope at La Silla (Chile) using the 8kx8k Wide-Field Imager (WFI). The field is centered at α(J2000)=02^h26^m00^s and δ(J2000)=-04°30'00'', the total covered area is 0.9 °² and the limiting magnitude (50% completeness) is U_AB∼25.4mag. Reduction steps, including astrometry, photometry and catalogue extraction, are first discussed. The achieved astrometric accuracy (rms) is ∼0.2'' with reference to the I-band catalog and ∼0.07'' internally (estimated from overlapping sources in different exposures). The photometric accuracy including uncertainties from photometric calibration, is <0.1mag. Various tests are then performed as a quality assessment of the data. They include: (i) the color distribution of stars and galaxies in the field, done together with the BVRI data available from the VIMOS survey; (ii) the comparison with previous published results of U-band magnitude-number counts of galaxies.