Noisy distance estimates associated with photometric rather than spectroscopic redshifts lead to a mis-estimate of the luminosities, and produce a correlated mis-estimate of the sizes. We consider a sample of early-type galaxies from the SDSS DR6 and apply the generalization of the V_max method to correct for these biases. We show that our technique recovers the true redshift, magnitude and size distributions, as well as the true size-luminosity relation. Regardless the specific application outlined here, our method impacts a broader range of studies, when at least one distance-dependent quantity is involved.
@article{arxiv.0804.0818,
title = {Effect of Distance Errors: Applications to SDSS Early-Type Galaxies},
author = {Graziano Rossi and Ravi K. Sheth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.0818},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the XLIIIst Rencontres de Moriond, Cosmology, La Thuile, Italy, 15-22 March 2008