Open AccessAngular and three‐dimensional correlation functions determined from the Muenster Red Sky Survey
Author(s) -
Boschán Peter
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05201.x
Subject(s) - physics , sky , correlation function (quantum field theory) , astrophysics , galaxy , magnitude (astronomy) , function (biology) , correlation , range (aeronautics) , position (finance) , power law , statistics , geometry , quantum mechanics , mathematics , materials science , finance , evolutionary biology , dielectric , economics , composite material , biology
We measure the two‐dimensional galaxy–galaxy correlation function from the Muenster Red Sky Survey. This survey covers a slightly larger sky area compared with the APM survey and is complete to r F <18.3 mag ( z med ∼0.14) . The large dynamic range of the survey makes it possible to examine sub‐catalogues with different limiting magnitudes. The positive parts of our measured angular correlation functions (after the colour correction) show excellent agreement with those measured by Maddox, Efstathiou & Sutherland from the APM galaxy catalogue. From the measured angular correlation functions, the three‐dimensional two‐point correlation function ξ ( r ) is calculated. We have chosen the evolution parameter ε so that the change of the correlation length r 0 with the depth of the sub‐catalogue is minimal. This prescription gives r 0 =5.82±0.05 h ‐1 Mpc and a very high, positive evolution parameter ε =2.6 . The position of the point where the three‐dimensional correlation function breaks away from the power law depends on the depth of the sub‐catalogues: the break comes earlier for lower magnitude limits, and later for higher magnitude limits.