Related papers: What galaxy surveys really measure
Gravitational Lensing is an efficient tool to probe: the mass distribution of collapsed systems: galaxies and clusters; high redshift objects thanks to the gravitational amplification; and the geometry of the Universe. I will review here…
This paper reviews the current status of measurements of galaxy clustering at high redshifts (z > 0.3). The focus is on the inherent limitations in the observation and interpretation of the ``evolution of clustering''. It is likely that…
If it is hypothesised that there is no dark matter then some alternative gravitational theory must take the place of general relativity (GR) on the largest scales. Dynamical measurements can be used to investigate the nature of such a…
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in Universe. They are very important as both cosmological probes and astrophysical laboratories. Several methods have been developed to detect galaxy clusters with different techniques (optical,…
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey has now measured in excess of 160000 galaxy redshifts. This paper presents the power spectrum of the galaxy distribution, calculated using a direct FFT-based technique. We argue that, within the k-space region…
Gravitational time delays, observed in strong lens systems where the variable background source is multiply-imaged by a massive galaxy in the foreground, provide direct measurements of cosmological distance that are very complementary to…
Given a redshift survey of galaxies with measurements of apparent magnitudes, we present a novel method for measuring the growth rate $f(\Omega)$ of cosmological linear perturbations. We use the galaxy distribution within the survey to…
In this review, I discuss the use of galaxy-galaxy weak lensing measurements to study the masses of dark matter halos in which galaxies reside. After summarizing how weak gravitational lensing measurements can be interpreted in terms of…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
A cosmic shear survey, spanning a significant proportion of the sky, should greatly improve constraints on a number of cosmological parameters. It also provides a unique opportunity to examine the matter power spectrum directly. However,…
The large-scale structure is a major source of cosmological information. However, next-generation photometric galaxy surveys will only provide a distorted view of cosmic structures due to large redshift uncertainties. To address the need…
Our view of the properties of galaxies is strongly affected by the way in which we survey for them. I discuss some aspects of selection effects and methods to compensate for them. One result is an estimate of the surface brightness…
We describe a method for estimating the power spectrum of density fluctuations from galaxy redshift surveys that yields improvement in both accuracy and resolution over direct Fourier analysis. The key feature of this analysis is expansion…
Only galaxies bright enough and large enough to be unambiguously identified and measured are included in galaxy surveys used to estimate cosmic shear. We demonstrate that because gravitational lensing can scatter galaxies across the…
We investigate the feasibility of measuring the effects of peculiar velocities in large-scale structure using the dipole of the redshift-space cross-correlation function. We combine number counts of galaxies with brightness-temperature…
Recent developments in gravitational lensing astronomy have paved the way to genuine mappings of the gravitational potential at cosmological scales. We stress that comparing these data with traditional large scale structure surveys will…
The conventional method to determine the cosmic curvature is to measure the total mass density $\Omega_{\rm tot}$. Unfortunately the observational $\Omega_{\rm tot}$ is closely near the critical value 1. The computation of this paper shows…
In addition to the intrinsic clustering of galaxies themselves, the spatial distribution of galaxies observed in surveys is modulated by the presence of weak lensing due to matter in the foreground. This effect, known as magnification bias,…
The cosmological redshifts z in the frequencies of spectral lines from distant galaxies as compared with their values observed in terrestrial laboratories, which are due to the scale factor a(t), frequently are interpret as a…
We develop new methods to study the properties of galaxy redshift surveys and radial peculiar velocity surveys, both individually and combined. We derive the Fisher information matrix for redshift surveys, including redshift distortions and…