Luminosity Distributions within Rich Clusters - II: Demonstration and Verification via Simulation

Details Luminosity Distributions within Rich Clusters - II: Demonstration and Verification via Simulation Luminosity Distributions within Rich Clusters - II: Demonstration and Verification via Simulation

1998-09-15

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9809190v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

24 pages, 8 figures accepted for publication in MNRAS also available from http://star-www.st-and.ac.uk/~spd3/bib.html

Scientific paper

10.1046/j.1365-8711.1998.01994.x

We present detailed simulations of long exposure CCD images. The simulations are used to explore the validity of the statistical method for reconstructing the luminosity distribution of galaxies within a rich cluster i.e. by the subtraction of field number-counts from those of a sight-line through the cluster. In particular we use the simulations to establish the reliability of our observational data presented in Paper 3. Based on our intended CCD field-of-view (6.5 by 6.5 arcmins) and a 1-sigma detection limit of 26 mags per sq arcsecond, we conclude that the luminosity distribution can be robustly determined over a wide range of absolute magnitude (-23 < M_{R} < -16) provided: (a) the cluster has an Abell richness 1.5 or greater, (b) the cluster's redshift lies in the range 0.1 < z < 0.3, (c) the seeing is better than FWHM 1.25'' and (d) the photometric zero points are accurate to within Delta m = \pm 0.12. If these conditions are not met then the recovered luminosity distribution is unreliable and potentially grossly miss-leading. Finally although the method clearly has limitations, within these limitations the technique represents an extremely promising probe of galaxy evolution and environmental dependencies.

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