The southern sky redshift survey

We report redshifts, magnitudes, and morphological classifications for 5369 galaxies with m(B) less than or equal to 15.5 and for 57 galaxies fainter than this limit, in two regions covering a total of 1.70 sr in the southern celestial hemisphere. The galaxy catalog is drawn primarily from the list of nonstellar objects identified in the Hubble Space Telescope Guide Star Catalog (GSC). The galaxies have positions accurate to similar to 1 " and magnitudes with an rms scatter of similar to 0.3 mag. We compute magnitudes (m(SSRS2)) from the relation between instrumental GSC magnitudes and the photometry by Lauberts & Valentijn. From a comparison with CCD photometry, we find that our system is homogeneous across the sky and corresponds to magnitudes measured at the isophotal level similar to 26 mag arcsec(-2). The precision of the radial velocities is similar to 40 km s(-1), and the redshift survey is more than 99% complete to the m(SSRS2) = 15.5 mag limit. This sample is in the direction opposite that of the CfA2; in combination the two surveys provide an important database for studies of the properties of galaxies and their large-scale distribution in the nearby universe.