Analysis of Systematic Effects and Statistical Uncertainties in Angular Clustering of Galaxies from Early SDSS Data
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 10^8 galaxies in five bands, adding significantly to the cosmological constraints. This is the first in a series of papers analyzing a rectangular stripe 2.5x90 degrees from early SDSS data. We present the angular correlation function for galaxies in four separate magnitude bins on angular scales ranging from 0.003 degrees to 15 degrees. 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0107416,
title = {Analysis of Systematic Effects and Statistical Uncertainties in Angular Clustering of Galaxies from Early SDSS Data},
author = {SDSS Collaboration and Ryan Scranton and David Johnston and Scott Dodelson and Joshua A. Frieman and Andy Connolly and Daniel J. Eisenstein and James E. Gunn and Lam Hui and Bhuvnesh Jain and Stephen Kent and Jon Loveday and Vijay Narayanan and Robert C. Nichol and Liam O'Connell and Roman Scoccimarro and Ravi K. Sheth and Albert Stebbins and Michael A. Strauss and Alexander S. Szalay and Istvan Szapudi and Max Tegmark and Michael Vogeley and Idit Zehavi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0107416},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
64 pages, 31 figures, new version to match that accepted by ApJ