| Abstract
| - Abstract. We present spectroscopic follow-up observations of galaxies from the Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS). MUNICS is a wide-field medium-deep K′-band-selected survey covering 1 deg2 in the near-infrared K′ and J passbands, and 0.35 deg2 in I, R, V, and, recently completed, B. The spectroscopic sample comprises observations of objects down to a limit of K′≤ 17.5 in five survey fields (0.17 deg2 in total), and a sparsely selected deeper sample (K′≤ 19.0) constructed in one of the survey patches (0.03 deg2). Here we describe the selection procedure of objects for spectroscopic observations, the observations themselves, the data reduction and the construction of the spectroscopic catalogue containing roughly 500 galaxies with secure redshifts. Furthermore, we discuss global properties of the sample such as its distribution in colour-redshift space, the accuracy of redshift determination, and the completeness function of the data. We derive the rest-frame K′-band luminosity function of galaxies at median redshifts of z= 0.2, 0.4 and 0.7. We find evidence for mild evolution of magnitudes (ΔM*K≃−0.70 mag) and number densities (ΔΦ*K/Φ*K≃−0.35) to a redshift of unity. Furthermore, we present the rest-frame J-band luminosity function of galaxies at these redshifts, the first determination of this quantity at higher redshifts, with a behaviour similar to the K-band luminosity function.
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