z Bootes: z ‐Band Photometry in the NOAO Deep Wide‐Field Survey Bootes Field

We present z Bootes, a new z -band photometric imaging campaign of 7.62 deg 2 in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS) Bootes field. In this paper, all of the images for this survey are released as well as the associated catalogs. The final z Bootes catalogs are complete (at the 50% level) to 22.7 mag over 50% of the field. With these depths, the z Bootes images should be sensitive to L * galaxies to z ~ 1 over much of the survey area. These data have several possible applications including searching for and characterizing high-redshift quasars and brown dwarfs and providing added constraints to photometric redshift determinations of galaxies and active galaxies to moderate redshift. The z Bootes imaging adds photometric data at a new wavelength to the existing wealth of multiwavelength observations of the NDWFS Bootes field.