The Canada-France Redshift Survey. I. Introduction to the Survey, Photometric Catalogs, and Surface Brightness Selection Effects

The Canada-France Redshift Survey has been undertaken to provide a large well-defined sample of faint galaxies at high redshift in which the selection criteria match as closely as possible those of samples of nearby galaxies. The survey is designed to have a median redshift of z ∼ 0.6 corresponding to a look-back time of half the present age of the universe for Ω ∼ 1. Such a survey can then be used for studying many different aspects of the evolution of galaxies over the interval 0 AB ≤ 22.5 and are essentially complete for central surface brightnesses as faint as μAB(I) ∼ 24.5 mag arcsec-2. This should be sufficient to include both normal surface brightness galaxies and prototypes of extreme low surface brightness galaxies.