2010/02/19 by David T. Hill, Simon P. Driver, Ewan Cameron +3 · 22 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #COSMIC cancer database #Data set #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Homogeneous #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Normalization (sociology) #Photometry (optics) #Redshift #Sky #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16374.x
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Oxford University Press) · 17 pages, 13 figures, Accepted in MNRAS: 2010 January 18; in original form 2009 August 17
arxiv created 2010/02/19 · openalex publication_date 2010/03/01 · arxiv updated 2015/05/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We combine data from the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue, Sloan Digital Sky Survey and UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey Large Area Survey to produce ugrizYJHK luminosity functions and densities from within a common, low-redshift volume (z < 0.1, ∼ 71 000 h−31 Mpc3 for L* systems) with 100 per cent spectroscopic completeness. In the optical the fitted Schechter functions are comparable in shape to those previously reported values but with higher normalizations (typically 0, 30, 20, 15, 5 per cent higher φ* values in u, g, r, i, z, respectively, over those reported by the SDSS team). We attribute these to differences in the redshift ranges probed, incompleteness and adopted normalization methods. In the near-IR (NIR) we find significantly different Schechter function parameters (mainly in the M* values) to those previously reported and attribute this to the improvement in the quality of the imaging data over previous studies. This is the first homogeneous measurement of the extragalactic luminosity density which fully samples both the optical and NIR regimes. Unlike previous compilations that have noted a discontinuity between the optical and NIR regimes our homogeneous data set shows a smooth cosmic spectral energy distribution (CSED). After correcting for dust attenuation we compare our CSED to the expected values based on recent constraints on the cosmic star formation history and the initial mass function.