Henry McCracken
Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, Marseille

Investigating field galaxy evolution 
with ultra-deep wide-angle imaging surveys

In my talk I will describe and present first results from two new,
large (>1 sq degree), deep (I~26), multi-wavelength (UBVIZ + K) imaging
surveys: the Canada-France Deep Fields project (carried out using UH8K)
and the VIRMOS imaging survey (currently underway with CFH12K).  The
CFDF project comprises four fields (covering the original CFRS fields)
which have been observed with UH8K. The total areal coverage is ~1sq
degree, and our data is supplemented by deep U band data from CTIO. Our
nominal integration time in I is ~5hrs, which allows to reach a depth
of Ikc\sim25.5; in the total survey there 100,000 galaxies.  I will
present results on the galaxy counts, colour evolution, and evolution
of the angular correlation function derived from this data.  I will
also briefly describe the status of the VIRMOS imaging survey which is
currently being carried out at CFHT using CFH12K (with U data from the
ESO 2.2m and K data from the NTT). This survey will contain 1,000,000
galaxies and will be used to select 150,000 galaxies for spectroscopy
with VIRMOS on the VLT.