Angular Correlations of Faint (B<24) Galaxies

Extract

We investigate the two point angular correlation function, ω(θ), of faint galaxy samples obtained from COSMOS machine measurements of 3.9m AAT plates. The area of sky used is the largest yet covered to very faint limits(b_j<24 over 2.1 deg² and r_F<22 over 1.4 deg²). The power law slope of ω(θ) is found to be consistent with a value of −0.8 at all depths in both passbands (see fig.1). The amplitudes measured by different authors show a large scatter in the blue passband (see fig.2). If this scatter also appied to the red passband (fig.3) we conclude that although a smaller clustering amplitude in the past is preferred, it is not possible to rule out the stable clustering model, and that models in which the clustering is co-moving may be inconsistent with the data.