This is CMC12 (Version 1.0), an astrometric and photometric catalogue of 6.3 million stars in the red magnitude range 9 to 17. The Carlsberg Meridian Telescope (CMT) underwent a major upgrade in March 1999. A 2k by 2k CCD camera was installed with a Sloan r' filter operating in a drift scan mode. With the new system, the magnitude limit is r'_CMT_=17 and the positional accuracy is about 0.035". The main task of the CMT is to map the sky in the declination range -3{deg} to +30{deg} with the aim of providing an astrometric, and photometric, catalogue that can accurately transfer the Hipparcos/Tycho reference frame to Schmidt plates. The current release (Version 1.0) comprises all the observations made between March 1999 and March 2002 with the new CCD in the declination band -3{deg} to +3{deg}. It is intended to release the rest of the catalogue later. A more complete description is available in the documentation at http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~dwe/SRF/cmc12/cmc12_documentation.ps or http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~dwe/SRF/cmc12/cmc12_documentation.pdf