Luminous Red Galaxies as Tracers of Large-Scale Structure in the Universe — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Luminous Red Galaxies as Tracers of Large-Scale Structure in the Universe

Name: Eli Favela
Major: Physics and Mathematics
Hometown: Palatine, IL
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

A search for evidence of large-scale structure (LSS) at high redshift (0.4<z<0.6) was undertaken using Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) in the MegaZ LRG catalog (Collister et al. 2006). Analysis of LSS was done first at low redshift in order to understand how to visualize the data. Properties of known LRGs at low redshift (z<0.4) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 7 (SDSS DR7) were examined with help of the SQL database search query tool. A 3D map of the spatial distribution of LRGs was generated using IFrIT software (Gnedin v3.4.0) with SDSS spectroscopic data to study the local universe at low redshift. Confirmation of the Great Sloan Wall (Gott et al. 2005), the largest known structure to date, appeared in the maps. The effect of the errors in photometric redshifts and corresponding errors in distance was observed on the maps. The error Δz was found to range between 0.03 and 0.05, corresponding to an approximate distance of 100-200 Mpc. By binning redshifts in shells of thickness Δz=0.05 and using Hammer-Aitoff projections the LSS was still observable in the photometric data. This method was then applied to the MegaZ LRG data and potential great walls were found at redshift ranges of 0.4<z<0.6. The research can be extended by utilizing the recently released SDSS DR9 and BOSS survey data which contains more photometric redshift data.

Poster file