Galaxy Number Counts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data

By N. Yasuda, M. Fukugita, V. Narayanan, Robert Lupton, I. Strateva, M. Strauss, Željko Ivezic´, R. Kim, David Hoog, D. Weinberg and 26 more. 2001

221 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present bright galaxy number counts in five broad bands (u′, g′, r′, i′, z′) from imaging data taken during the commissioning phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The counts are derived from two independent stripes of imaging scans along the celestial equator, one each toward the northern and the southern Galactic cap, covering about 230 and 210 deg2, respectively. A careful study is made to verify the reliability of the photometric catalog. For galaxies brighter than r* = 16, the catalog produced by automated software is examined against eye inspection of all objects. Statistically meaningful results on the galaxy counts are obtained in the magnitude range 12 ≤ r* ≤ 21, using a sample of 900,000 galaxies. The counts from the two stripes differ by about 30% at magnitudes brighter than r* = 15.5, consistent with a local 2 σ fluctuation due to large-scale structure in the galaxy distribution. The shape of the number counts–magnitude relation brighter than r* = 16 is well characterized by N ∝ 100.6m, the relation expected for a homogeneous galaxy distribution in a "Euclidean" universe. In the magnitude range 16 < r* < 21, the galaxy counts from both stripes agree very well and follow the prediction of the no-evolution model, although the data do not exclude a small amount of evolution. We use empirically determined color transformations to derive the galaxy number counts in the B and I814 bands. We compute the luminosity density of the universe at zero redshift in the five SDSS bands and in the B band. We find ℛB = 2.4 ± 0.4 × 108 L⊙ h Mpc-3, for a reasonably wide range of parameters of the Schechter luminosity function in the B band.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: discovery of a class of compact extremely star-forming galaxies (2009, methodology): “Compared to the size of the galaxies as measured by the SDSS Pipeline (Petrosian radius: Blanton et al. 2001; Yasuda et al. 2001), they are significantly smaller.”
Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Early Data Release (2002, unknown): “…to be the ratio of the local surface brightness in an annulus at r to the mean surface brightness within r, as described by Blanton et al. (2001) and Yasuda et al. (2001): RPðrÞ R 1:25r 0:8r dr 0 2 r0Iðr0Þ ½ ð1:252 0:82Þr2 R r 0 dr 0 2 r0Iðr0Þ ð r2Þ ; ð7Þ where I(r) is the azimuthally averaged…”
The SDSS DR6 luminosity functions of galaxies (2008, background): “However, our results and those from Yasuda et al. (2001) are not directly comparable.”
The Luminosity Function of Morphologically Classified Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2002, background): “We note that there are some galaxies which are dropped in the primary galaxy selection in the photometric catalogue (Yasuda et al. 2001; Strauss et al. 2002) due to saturation flags caused by nearby bright stars or to other reasons.”
Cosmological parameter constraints from galaxy-galaxy lensing and galaxy clustering with the SDSS DR7 (2012, methodology): “The nominal flux limit is r < 17.77, when defined using Petrosian magnitudes6 (based on a modification of Petrosian 1976 described in Blanton et al. 2001 and Yasuda et al. 2001).”
A Deep Wide-Field, Optical, and Near-Infrared Catalog of a Large Area around the Hubble Deep Field North (2003, methodology): “The Sloan B-band counts were generated by extrapolating between the u 0, g 0, and r 0 bands (Yasuda et al. 2001).”
Spectroscopic Target Selection in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Quasar Sample (2002, background): “Yasuda et al. (2001) and Scranton et al. (2001) show that the star-galaxy separation is reliable at least to r∗ ∼ 21 — typically much fainter than the limit explored by quasar target selection.”
Minor Galaxy Interactions: Star Formation Rates and Galaxy Properties (2007, methodology): “To derive the specific star formation rate from the SFR, we normalize the SFR by theMz of the galaxy, where the normalization factor assumes 1 M ¼ 1 L in the z band and Mz( ) ¼ 4:52 (Yasuda et al. 2001).”
Galaxy Clustering in Early Sloan Digital Sky Survey Redshift Data (2002, background): “…(and large) fraction of a galaxy’s total light, independent of redshift or central surface brightness but (slightly) dependent on light-profile shape (Blanton et al. 2001a; R. H. Lupton et al., in preparation; Strauss et al. 2002; C. Stoughton et al. 2002, in preparation; Yasuda et al. 2001).”
REPRODUCING THE STELLAR MASS/HALO MASS RELATION IN SIMULATED ΛCDM GALAXIES: THEORY VERSUS OBSERVATIONAL ESTIMATES (2012, methodology): “• For each simulated galaxy, Petrosian aperture magnitudes (Blanton et al. 2001; Yasuda et al. 2001) were obtained in the r band.”
Sloan Digital Sky Survey Standard Star Catalog for Stripe 82: The Dawn of Industrial 1% Optical Photometry (2007, methodology): “The Tests of Catalog Quality Based on Galaxy Colors The color distribution of galaxies is bimodal (Strateva et al. 2001; Yasuda et al. 2001; Baldry et al. 2004).”
Analysis of Systematic Effects and Statistical Uncertainties in Angular Clustering of Galaxies from Early Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data (2001, methodology): “This pair of runs has been used in previous early SDSS papers analyzing the galaxy luminosity function (Blanton et al. 2001), number counts (Yasuda et al. 2001), and colors (Shimasaku et al. 2001; Strateva et al. 2001).”
Spectroscopic Target Selection in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Main Galaxy Sample (2002, methodology): “From studies of galaxy number counts (Yasuda et al. 2001), a fully sampled magnitudelimited survey reaches this surface density at a magnitude limit of r 18.”
The UKIRT wide field camera ZYJHK photometric system: calibration from 2MASS (2008, background): “46 Petrosian radius rp as defined in Yasuda et al. 2001 AJ 112 1104 47 Kron radius rk as defined in Bertin and Arnouts 1996 A&A Supp 117 393 48 Hall radius rh image scale radius eg.”
A universal ultraviolet–optical colour–colour–magnitude relation of galaxies★ (2011, background): “Petrosian magnitudes may underestimate the total galaxy flux by 15–20 per cent in case of face-on de Vaucouleurs profiles (Yasuda et al. 2001).”
Star formation in close pairs selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2004, methodology): “…measure is the specific star formation rate, defined as the SFR divided by the stellar mass. Approximate stellar masses were calculated fromz-band (λeff = 9097Å) luminosities, using Mz(⊙) = 4.52, as used by Yasuda et al. (2001), and assuming one solar luminosity corresponds to one solar mass.”