  In this paper we present a deep and homogeneous i-band selected
multi-waveband catalogue in the COSMOS field covering an area of about 0.7
square-degree. Our catalogue with a formal 50 percent completeness limit for
point sources of i~26.7 comprises about 290.000 galaxies with information in 8
passbands. We combine publicly available u, B, V, r, i, z, and K data with
proprietary imaging in H band. We discuss in detail the observations, the data
reduction, and the photometric properties of the H-band data. We estimate
photometric redshifts for all the galaxies in the catalogue. A comparison with
162 spectroscopic redshifts in the redshift range 0 < z < 3 shows that the
achieved accuracy of the photometric redshifts is (Delta_z / (z_spec+1)) ~0.035
with only ~2 percent outliers. We derive absolute UV magnitudes and investigate
the evolution of the luminosity function evaluated in the rest-frame UV at 1500
Angstrom. There is a good agreement between the LFs derived here and the LFs
derived in the FORS Deep Field. We see a similar brightening of M_star and a
decrease of phi_star with redshift. The catalogue including the photometric
redshift information is made publicly available.
