The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey - VLT/FORS2 Spectroscopy

As part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), multi-object, optical to NIR spectroscopy in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S) has been carried out, using the FORS2 instrument mounted at the Kueyen Unit Telescope of the VLT at ESO's Cerro Paranal Observatory, Chile. This release accumulates 1715 spectra of 1225 unique targets which have been obtained with the FORS2 spectrograph between September 2002 and October 2006, providing in total 1165 redshift measurements. The average of the redshift distribution (z>0) is z=1.666 (median z=1.158). The typical error in the redshift determination (of course it depends on the S/N of the spectrum) is in general +/-0.001 as we calculated in the paper II (A&A 454, 423-435 (2006)) by comparing the redshift of sources in common with other spectroscopic surveys. This release provides the full set of extracted 1-dimensional fits spectra in the GOODS/FORS2 survey and associated spectral previews and colour image cutouts (5"x5") for each target. Furthermore, a catalogue is provided where we give for each target the basic ACS image information such as magnitude (in the AB system) and colours as well as the measured redshift and associated comments.