Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples

Details Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples

2008-01-24

arxiv.org/abs/0801.3822v1

Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.390:118,2008

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

14 pages, 9 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Scientific paper

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13510.x

We present an empirical method for estimating the underlying redshift distribution N(z) of galaxy photometric samples from photometric observables. The method does not rely on photometric redshift (photo-z) estimates for individual galaxies, which typically suffer from biases. Instead, it assigns weights to galaxies in a spectroscopic subsample such that the weighted distributions of photometric observables (e.g., multi-band magnitudes) match the corresponding distributions for the photometric sample. The weights are estimated using a nearest-neighbor technique that ensures stability in sparsely populated regions of color-magnitude space. The derived weights are then summed in redshift bins to create the redshift distribution. We apply this weighting technique to data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as well as to mock catalogs for the Dark Energy Survey, and compare the results to those from the estimation of photo-z's derived by a neural network algorithm. We find that the weighting method accurately recovers the underlying redshift distribution, typically better than the photo-z reconstruction, provided the spectroscopic subsample spans the range of photometric observables covered by the photometric sample.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples 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 Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Estimating the Redshift Distribution of Faint Galaxy Samples will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-283610