Optical Images and Source Catalog of AKARI North Ecliptic Pole Wide
  Survey Field
  We present the source catalog and the properties of the $B-, R-$, and
$I-$band images obtained to support the {\it AKARI} North Ecliptic Pole Wide
(NEP-Wide) survey. The NEP-Wide is an {\it AKARI} infrared imaging survey of
the north ecliptic pole covering a 5.8 deg$^2$ area over 2.5 -- 6 $\micron$
wavelengths. The optical imaging data were obtained at the Maidanak Observatory
in Uzbekistan using the Seoul National University 4k $\times$ 4k Camera on the
1.5m telescope. These images cover 4.9 deg$^2$ where no deep optical imaging
data are available. Our $B-, R-$, and $I-$band data reach the depths of
$\sim$23.4, $\sim$23.1, and $\sim$22.3 mag (AB) at 5$\sigma$, respectively. The
source catalog contains 96,460 objects in the $R-$band, and the astrometric
accuracy is about 0.15$\arcsec$ at 1$\sigma$ in each RA and Dec direction.
These photometric data will be useful for many studies including identification
of optical counterparts of the infrared sources detected by {\it AKARI},
analysis of their spectral energy distributions from optical through infrared,
and the selection of interesting objects to understand the obscured galaxy
evolution.
