WFPC2 Observations of the Hubble Deep Field South

The Hubble Deep Field South (HDF-S) observations targeted a high Galactic latitude field near QSO J2233-606. We present Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations of the field in four wide bandpasses centered at roughly 300, 450, 606, and 814 nm. Observations, data reduction procedures, and noise properties of the final images are discussed in detail. A catalog of sources is presented, and the number counts and color distributions of the galaxies are compared with a new catalog of the original Hubble Deep Field (HDF-N) that has been constructed in an identical manner. The two fields are qualitatively similar, with the galaxy number counts for the two fields agreeing to within 20%. The HDF-S has more candidate Lyman break galaxies at z > 2 than the HDF-N. The star formation rate per unit volume computed from the HDF-S, based on the UV luminosity of high-redshift candidates, is a factor of 1.9 higher than from the HDF-N at z ∼ 2.7, and a factor of 1.3 higher at z ∼ 4.