The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: spectra and redshifts

The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) is designed to measure redshifts for approximately 250 000 galaxies. This paper describes the survey design, the spectroscopic observations, the redshift measurements and the survey data base. The 2dFGRS uses the 2dF multifibre spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, which is capable of observing 400 objects simultaneously over a 28 diameter field. The source catalogue for the survey is a revised and extended version of the APM galaxy catalogue, and the targets are galaxies with extinction-corrected magnitudes brighter than b J 19:45. The main survey regions are two declination strips, one in the southern Galactic hemisphere spanning 808 158 around the SGP, and the other in the northern Galactic hemisphere spanning 758 108 along the celestial equator; in addition, there are 99 fields spread over the southern Galactic cap. The survey covers 2000 deg 2 and has a median depth of z 0:11. Adaptive tiling is used to give a highly uniform sampling rate of 93 per cent over the whole survey region. Redshifts are measured from spectra covering 3600-8000