The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: 16 ≤BMGC< 24 galaxy counts and the calibration of the local galaxy luminosity function

The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC) is a 37.5 deg 2 , medium-deep, B-band imaging survey along the celestial equator, taken with the Wide Field Camera on the Isaac Newton Telescope. The survey region is contained within the regions of both the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release (SDSS-EDR). The survey has a uniform isophotal detection limit of 26 mag arcsec -2 and it provides a robust, well-defined catalogue of stars and galaxies in the range 16 B MGC < 24 mag.