We present the full public data release ( PDR-2 ) of the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey ( VIPERS ) , performed at the ESO VLT .
We release redshifts , spectra , CFHTLS magnitudes and ancillary information ( as masks and weights ) for a complete sample of 86,775 galaxies ( plus 4,732 other objects , including stars and serendipitous galaxies ) ; we also include their full photometrically-selected parent catalogue .
The sample is magnitude limited to i _ { AB } \leq 22.5 , with an additional colour-colour pre-selection devised as to exclude galaxies at z < 0.5 .
This practically doubles the effective sampling of the VIMOS spectrograph over the range 0.5 < z < 1.2 ( reaching 47 % on average ) , yielding a final median local galaxy density close to 5 \times 10 ^ { -3 } h ^ { 3 } { Mpc } ^ { -3 } .
The total area spanned by the final data set is \simeq 23.5 deg ^ { 2 } , corresponding to 288 VIMOS fields with marginal overlaps , split over two regions within the CFHTLS-Wide W1 and W4 equatorial fields ( at R.A . \simeq 2 and \simeq 22 hours , respectively ) .
Spectra were observed at a resolution R = 220 , covering a wavelength range 5500-9500 Å .
Data reduction and redshift measurements were performed through a fully automated pipeline ; all redshift determinations were then visually validated and assigned a quality flag .
Measurements with a quality flag \geq 2 are shown to have a confidence level of 96 % or larger and make up 88 % of all measured galaxy redshifts ( 76,552 out of 86,775 ) , constituting the VIPERS prime catalogue for statistical investigations .
For this sample the rms redshift error , estimated using repeated measurements of about 3,000 galaxies , is found to be \sigma _ { z } = 0.00054 ( 1 + z ) .
All data are available at http : //vipers.inaf.it and on the ESO Archive .