Analysis of systematic effects and statistical uncertainties in angular clustering of galaxies from early sloan digital sky survey data

Ryan Scranton, David Johnston, Scott Dodelson, Joshua A. Frieman, Andy Connolly, Daniel J. Eisenstein, James E. Gunn, Lam Hui, Bhuvnesh Jain, Stephen Kent, Jon Loveday, Vijay Narayanan, Robert C. Nichol, Liam O'Connell, Roman Scoccimarro, Ravi K. Sheth, Albert Stebbins, Michael A. Strauss, Alexander S. Szalay, István SzapudiMax Tegmark, Michael Vogeley, Idit Zehavi, James Annis, Neta A. Bahcall, Jon Brinkman, István Csabai, Robert Hindsley, Zeljko Ivezic, Rita S.J. Kim, Gillian R. Knapp, Don Q. Lamb, Brian C. Lee, Robert H. Lupton, Timothy McKay, Jeff Munn, John Peoples, Jeff Pier, Gordon T. Richards, Constance Rockosi, David Schlegel, Donald P. Schneider, Christopher Stoughton, Douglas L. Tucker, Brian Yanny, Donald G. York

    Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The angular distribution of galaxies encodes a wealth of information about large-scale structure. Ultimately, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will record the angular positions of order of 108 galaxies in five bands, adding significantly to the cosmological constraints. This is the first in a series of papers analyzing a rectangular stripe of 2°.5 × 90° from early SDSS data. We present the angular correlation function for galaxies in four separate magnitude bins on angular scales ranging from 0°.003 to 15°. Much of the focus of this paper is on potential systematic effects. We show that the final galaxy catalog - with the mask accounting for regions of poor seeing, reddening, bright stars, etc. - is free from external and internal systematic effects for galaxies brighter than r* = 22. Our estimator of the angular correlation function includes the effects of the integral constraint and the mask. The full covariance matrix of errors in these estimates is derived using mock catalogs with further estimates using a number of other methods.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)48-75
    Number of pages28
    JournalAstrophysical Journal
    Volume579
    Issue number1 I
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Nov 1 2002

    Keywords

    • Cosmology: observations
    • Large-scale structure of universe

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Astronomy and Astrophysics
    • Space and Planetary Science

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