VLT and NTT observations of two EIS cluster candidates. Detection of the early-type galaxies sequence at Z ~ 1

Optical data from the ESO VLT-UT1 Science Verifi- cation observations are combined with near-infrared data from SOFI at the NTT to obtain optical-infrared color-magnitude dia- grams for the objects in the fields of two EIS cluster candidates. In both cases, evidence is found for a well-defined sequence of red galaxies that appear to be significantly more clustered than the background population. These results suggest that the two systems are real physical associations. The (R Ks), (I Ks) and (J Ks) colors of the red sequences are used, in conjunc- tion with similar data for spectroscopically confirmed clusters, to obtain redshift estimates of z 0:9 and z 1:0 for these two systems. These results make these EIS cluster candidates prime targets for follow-up spectroscopic observations to confirm their reality and to measure more accurately their redshift.