We present a high quality multiwavelength (from 0.3 to 8.0 micron) catalog of
the large and deep area in the GOODS Southern Field covered by the deep near-IR
observations obtained with the ESO VLT. The catalog is entirely based on public
data: in our analysis, we have included the F435W, F606W, F775W and F850LP ACS
images, the JHKs VLT data, the Spitzer data provided by IRAC instrument (3.6,
4.5, 5.8 and 8.0 micron), and publicly available U-band data from the 2.2ESO
and VLT-VIMOS. We describe in detail the procedures adopted to obtain this
multiwavelength catalog. In particular, we developed a specific software for
the accurate "PSF-matching" of space and ground-based images of different
resolution and depth (ConvPhot), of which we analyse performances and
limitations. We have included both z-selected, as well as Ks-selected objects,
yielding a unique, self-consistent catalog. The largest fraction of the sample
is 90% complete at z~26 or Ks~23.8 (AB scale). Finally, we cross-correlated our
data with all the spectroscopic catalogs available to date, assigning a
spectroscopic redshift to more than 1000 sources. The final catalog is made up
of 14847 objects, at least 72 of which are known stars, 68 are AGNs, and 928
galaxies with spectroscopic redshift (668 galaxies with reliable redshift
determination). We applied our photometric redshift code to this data set, and
the comparison with the spectroscopic sample shows that the quality of the
resulting photometric redshifts is excellent, with an average scatter of only
0.06. The full catalog, which we named GOODS-MUSIC (MUltiwavelength Southern
Infrared Catalog), including the spectroscopic information, is made publicly
available, together with the software specifically designed to this end.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics, uses aa.cls,
20 pages, 16 figures. Further information at http://lbc.oa-roma.inaf.it/good