Nearest neighbor vector analysis of SDSS DR5 galaxy distribution

Yongfeng Wu, Weike Xiao, Rongjun Mu, David Batuski, Andre Khalil

4Department of Mathematics, University of Maine, Orono, USA.
American Physical Society, Maryland, USA;.
Department of Astronautics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.
Department of Physics, University of Maine, Orono, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/ns.2013.51008                

Abstract

We present the nearest neighbor distance (NND) analysis of SDSS DR5 galaxies. We give NND results for observed, mock and random sample, and discuss the differences. We find the observed sample gives us a significantly stronger aggregation characteristic than the random samples. Moreover, we investigate the direction of NND and find the direction has close relation with the size of the NND for the observed sample.

Keywords

Nearest Neighbor Distance; Nearest Neighbor Vector; Anisotropy; SDSS DR5; Galaxy Distribution

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	Hubble, E.P., (1937) The observational approach to cosmology. The Clarendon Press, Oxford.
[2]	Neyman, J., Scott, E. L., & Shane, C. D. (1953) On the spatial distribution of galaxies: A specific model. Astrophysical Journal, 117, 92. doi:10.1086/145671
[3]	Abell, G.O. (1958) The distribution of rich clusters of galaxies. A catalogue of 2712 rich clusters found on the National Geographic Society Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. Astrophysical Journal, 3, 211.
[4]	Zwicky, F., Karpowicz, M., Kowal, C.T., Herzog, E. and Wild, P. (1961) Catalog of galaxies and of clusters of galaxies (CGCG) Calif. Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 196.
[5]	Peebles, P.J.E. (1973) Statistical analysis of catalogs of extragalactic objects. I. Theory. Astrophysical Journal, 185, 413-440.
[6]	Cao, L., Liu, J.R. and Fang, L.Z. (2007) Estimating power spectrum of Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect from the cross-correlation between the wilkinson microwave anistropy probe and the two micron all sky survey. Astrophysical Journal, 661, 641-649. doi:10.1086/516775
[7]	Ripley, B.D. (1981) Spatial statistics. Wiley, New York. doi:10.1002/0471725218
[8]	Baddeley, A.J, Kerscher, M., Schladitz, K. and Scott, B. (2000) Estimating the J function without edge correction. Statistica Neerlandica, 54, 1-14. doi:10.1111/1467-9574.00143
[9]	Bahcall, J. and Soneira R.M. (1981) The distribution of stars to V = 16th magnitude near the north galactic pole— Normalization, clustering properties, and counts in various bands. Astrophysical Journal, 246, 122-135. doi:10.1086/158905
[10]	Cressie, N. (1991) Statistics for spatial data. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
[11]	Kerscher, M., et al. (1999) A global descriptor of spatial pattern interaction in the galaxy distribution. Astrophysical Journal, 513, 543-548. doi:10.1086/306902
[12]	Batuski, D.J. and Burns, J.O. (1985) A possible 300 megaparsec filament of clusters of galaxies in PerseusPegasus. Astrophysical Journal, 299, 5-14.
[13]	Stavrev, K.Y. (1990) Large voids of rich clusters of galaxies. E?tv?s University, E?tv?s, 115.
[14]	Allam, S.S. (2005) A catalog of very isolated galaxies from the sloan digital sky survey data release 1. The Astronomical Journal, 129, 2062-2073. doi:10.1086/428754.
[15]	Clark, P.J. and Evans, F.J. (1954) Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology, 35, 445-453. doi:10.2307/1931034
[16]	Croton, D.J., et al. (2006) The many lives of active galactic nuclei: cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colours of galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 365, 11-28. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09675.x
[17]	Wu, Y., Batuski, D.J. and Khalil. A. (2009) Multi-scale morphological analysis of SDSS DR5 survey—Using the metric space technique. Astrophysical Journal, 707, 1160-1167. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/707/2/1160
[18]	Wu, Y., Batuski, D.J. and Khalil. A. (2012) Three dimensional filamentation analysis of SDSS DR5 Survey. ISRN Astronomy, 2012, Article ID: 171829.
[19]	Davis, M. and Peebles, P.J.E. (1983) A survey of galaxy redshifts. V. The two-point position and velocity correlations. Astrophysical Journal, 267, 465-482. doi:10.1086/160884
[20]	Vasilyev, N.L. (2008) Correlation analysis of large-scale structure using data from the SDSS DR5 LRG catalog. Astrophysics, 51, 320-335.
[21]	Ross, N.P., et al. (2009) Clustering of low-redshift (z ≤ 2.2) quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Astrophysical Journal, 697, 1634.
[22]	Mountrichas, G., et al. (2009) QSO-LRG two-point crosscorrelation function and redshift-space distortions. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 394, 2050-2064.
[23]	Calabretta, M.R. and Roukema, B.F. (2007) Mapping on the HEALPix grid. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1-8.
[24]	Weinberg, D.H. (2005) Mapping the large-scale structure of the universe. Science, 309, 564. doi:10.1126/science.1115128