Olivier Le Fevre

Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, Marseille

ABSTRACT: Rapid progress in understanding the formation and evolution of
galaxies, and the distribution in large scale structures (LSS), has
occured in the recent years. We now have a preliminary picture of the
history of star formation, and clustering of galaxies has been
identified out to z~3. The next step is to gather a sample large
enough to be able to consistently map the distribution
in LSS and its evolution, and the evolution of the stellar, gas, and
dust components, for individual classes
of galaxies and AGNs in the redshift range 0<z<5+. The VLT-VIRMOS
deep survey is aiming to gather a sample of more than 150000 redshifts
of galaxies and AGNs in three samples (AB<22, AB<24, AB<26). This survey
is based on 2 multi-object spectrographs being build for the ESO-VLT:
VIMOS and NIRMOS, offering multiplex gains up to 800 simultaneous
redshifts. I will present the instruments and associated performances,
and an overview of the VLT-VIRMOS deep survey.