Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-07-28
Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.359:237-250,2005
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
15 pages, 12 figs, matches version accepted by MNRAS
Scientific paper
10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.08915.x
We discuss the construction of a photometric redshift catalogue of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), emphasizing the principal steps necessary for constructing such a catalogue -- (i) photometrically selecting the sample, (ii) measuring photometric redshifts and their error distributions, (iii) and estimating the true redshift distribution. We compare two photometric redshift algorithms for these data and find that they give comparable results. Calibrating against the SDSS and SDSS-2dF spectroscopic surveys, we find that the photometric redshift accuracy is $\sigma \sim 0.03$ for redshifts less than 0.55 and worsens at higher redshift ($\sim 0.06$). These errors are caused by photometric scatter, as well as systematic errors in the templates, filter curves, and photometric zeropoints. We also parametrize the photometric redshift error distribution with a sum of Gaussians, and use this model to deconvolve the errors from the measured photometric redshift distribution to estimate the true redshift distribution. We pay special attention to the stability of this deconvolution, regularizing the method with a prior on the smoothness of the true redshift distribution. The methods we develop are applicable to general photometric redshift surveys.
Bridges Terry
Brinkmann Jonathan
Budavari Tamas
Cannon Russell
Connolly Andrew J.
No associations
LandOfFree
Calibrating Photometric Redshifts of Luminous Red Galaxies does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Calibrating Photometric Redshifts of Luminous Red Galaxies, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Calibrating Photometric Redshifts of Luminous Red Galaxies will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-456574