Ultradeep near-infrared ISAAC observations of the Hubble Deep Field South:: Observations, reduction, multicolor catalog, and photometric redshifts

We present deep near-infrared (NIR) J(s)-, H-, and K-s-band ISAAC imaging of the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) field of the Hubble Deep Field South (HDF-S). The 2.'5 x 2.'5 high Galactic latitude field was observed with the Very Large Telescope under the best seeing conditions, with integration times amounting to 33.6 hr in J(s), 32.3 hr in H, and 35.6 hr in K-s. We reach total AB magnitudes for point sources of 26.8, 26.2, and 26.2, respectively (3sigma), which make it the deepest ground-based NIR observation to date and the deepest K-s-band data in any field. The effective seeing of the co-added images is approximate to0."45 in J(s), approximate to0."48 in H, and approximate to0."46 in K-s. Using published WFPC2 optical data, we constructed a K-s-limited multicolor catalog containing 833 sources down to K-s,AB(tot) less than or similar to 26, of which 624 have seven-band optical-to-NIR photometry. These data allow us to select normal galaxies from their rest-frame optical properties to high redshift (z less than or similar to 4). The observations, data reduction, and properties of the final images are discussed, and we address the detection and photometry procedures that were used in making the catalog. In addition, we present deep number counts, color distributions, and photometric redshifts of the HDF-S galaxies. We find that our faint K-s-band number counts are flatter than published counts in other deep fields, which might reflect cosmic variations or different analysis techniques. Compared to the HDF-N, we find many galaxies with very red V-H colors at photometric redshifts 1.95 < z(phot) < 3.5. These galaxies are bright in K-s, with infrared colors redder than J(s)-K-s > 2. 3 (in Johnson magnitudes). Because they are extremely faint in the observed optical, they would be missed by ultraviolet optical selection techniques, such as the U-dropout method.