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M. Blanton, M. SubbaRao (University of Chicago), J. Loveday (University of Sussex), J. Annis (FNAL), N. Bahcall (Princeton University), M. Bernardi (University of Chicago), J. Brinkmann (APO), S. Burles (FNAL), F. Castander (University of Chicago), A. Connolly (University of Pittsburgh), J. Dalcanton (University of Washington), D. Eisenstein (University of Chicago), S. Friedman (John Hopkins), J. Frieman (FNAL), J. E. Gunn (Princeton University), R. Lupton (Princeton University), A. Meiksin (Edinburgh), A. Merrelli (Caltech), R. Nichol (Carnegie Mellon), A. Pope (University of Chicago), M. Postman (STScI), C. Rockosi (University of Chicago), D. Schlegel (Princeton University), S. Smee (University of Maryland), M. Strauss (Princeton University), A. Uomoto (Johns Hopkins), SDSS Collaboration
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has obtained redshifts for around 10,000 galaxies over an area of about 130 square degrees, down to a limiting Petrosian r' of 17.65. This sample, which represents about one percent of the redshifts to be obtained in the next five years, is already one of the largest and most uniformly selected samples of galaxies to date. Here we use several methods to derive the luminosity function, finding that a Schechter function provides a good fit to the data. There is a larger luminosity density than found in previous surveys; we show that this is due to the use of Petrosian rather than isophotal magnitudes. Because of these differences, we compare to the luminosity function of the Las Campanas Redshift Survey and the Two-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey by converting the SDSS magnitudes to isophotal magnitudes in the appropriate band in each case. This type of comparison is only possible because of the high quality photometric information available from the SDSS imaging survey.
The SDSS is a joint project of the University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Princeton University, United States Naval Observatory and the University of Washington. Funding has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the member institutions, NASA, NSF, the U.S. DoE, and the Ministry of Education of Japan.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: blanton@fnal.gov