13,115 research outputs found
The SDSS Galaxy Angular Two-Point Correlation Function
We present the galaxy two-point angular correlation function for galaxies
selected from the seventh data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The
galaxy sample was selected with -band apparent magnitudes between 17 and 21;
and we measure the correlation function for the full sample as well as for the
four magnitude ranges: 17-18, 18-19, 19-20, and 20-21. We update the flag
criteria to select a clean galaxy catalog and detail specific tests that we
perform to characterize systematic effects, including the effects of seeing,
Galactic extinction, and the overall survey uniformity. Notably, we find that
optimally we can use observed regions with seeing < 1\farcs5, and -band
extinction < 0.13 magnitudes, smaller than previously published results.
Furthermore, we confirm that the uniformity of the SDSS photometry is minimally
affected by the stripe geometry. We find that, overall, the two-point angular
correlation function can be described by a power law, with , over the range
0\fdg005--10\degr. We also find similar relationships for the four
magnitude subsamples, but the amplitude within the same angular interval for
the four subsamples is found to decrease with fainter magnitudes, in agreement
with previous results. We find that the systematic signals are well below the
galaxy angular correlation function for angles less than approximately
5\degr, which limits the modeling of galaxy angular correlations on larger
scales. Finally, we present our custom, highly parallelized two-point
correlation code that we used in this analysis.Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, accepted by MNRA
Galaxy clustering with photometric surveys using PDF redshift information
Photometric surveys produce large-area maps of the galaxy distribution, but
with less accurate redshift information than is obtained from spectroscopic
methods. Modern photometric redshift (photo-z) algorithms use galaxy
magnitudes, or colors, that are obtained through multi-band imaging to produce
a probability density function (PDF) for each galaxy in the map. We used
simulated data to study the effect of using different photo-z estimators to
assign galaxies to redshift bins in order to compare their effects on angular
clustering and galaxy bias measurements. We found that if we use the entire
PDF, rather than a single-point (mean or mode) estimate, the deviations are
less biased, especially when using narrow redshift bins. When the redshift bin
widths are , the use of the entire PDF reduces the typical
measurement bias from 5%, when using single point estimates, to 3%.Comment: Matches the MNRAS published version. 19 pages, 19 Figure
A Definitive Optical Detection of a Supercluster at z = 0.91
We present the results from a multi-band optical imaging program which has
definitively confirmed the existence of a supercluster at z = 0.91. Two massive
clusters of galaxies, CL1604+4304 at z = 0.897 and CL1604+4321 at z = 0.924,
were originally observed in the high-redshift cluster survey of Oke, Postman &
Lubin (1998). They are separated by 4300 km/s in radial velocity and 17
arcminutes on the plane of the sky. Their physical and redshift proximity
suggested a promising supercluster candidate. Deep BRi imaging of the region
between the two clusters indicates a large population of red galaxies. This
population forms a tight, red sequence in the color--magnitude diagram at (R-i)
= 1.4. The characteristic color is identical to that of the
spectroscopically-confirmed early-type galaxies in the two member clusters. The
red galaxies are spread throughout the 5 Mpc region between CL1604+4304 and
CL1604+4321. Their spatial distribution delineates the entire large scale
structure with high concentrations at the cluster centers. In addition, we
detect a significant overdensity of red galaxies directly between CL1604+4304
and CL1604+4321 which is the signature of a third, rich cluster associated with
this system. The strong sequence of red galaxies and their spatial distribution
clearly indicate that we have discovered a supercluster at z = 0.91.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters. 13 pages,
including 5 figure
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