WINGS: A WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey. II. Deep optical
  photometry of 77 nearby clusters
  (Abridged) Context. This is the second paper of a series devoted to the WIde
Field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS). WINGS is a long term project which
is gathering wide-field, multi-band imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a
complete sample of 77 X-ray selected, nearby clusters (0.04<z<0.07) located far
from the galactic plane (|b|>=20deg). The main goal of this project is to
establish a local reference for evolutionary studies of galaxies and galaxy
clusters. Aims. This paper presents the optical (B,V) photometric catalogs of
the WINGS sample and describes the procedures followed to construct them.
Methods. We have constructed photometric catalogs based on wide-field images in
B and V bands using SExtractor. Photometry has been performed on images in
which large galaxies and halos of bright stars were removed after modeling them
with elliptical isophotes. Results. We publish deep optical photometric
catalogs (90% complete at V~21.7, which translates to ~M*(V)+6 at mean
redshift), giving positions, geometrical parameters, and several total and
aperture magnitudes for all the objects detected. For each field we have
produced three catalogs containing galaxies, stars and objects of "unknown"
classification (~16%).
