Journal article

Observational determination of the galaxy bias from cosmic variance with a random pointing survey: Clustering of z ∼ 2 galaxies from Hubble's BoRG survey

AJ Cameron, M Trenti, RC Livermore, C Van Der Velden

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2019

Abstract

Gravitational clustering broadens the count-in-cells distribution of galaxies for surveys along uncorrelated (well-separated) lines of sight beyond Poisson noise. A number of methods have proposed to measure this excess 'cosmic' variance to constrain the galaxy bias (i.e. the strength of clustering) independently of the two-point correlation function. Here we present an observational application of these methods using data from 141 uncorrelated fields (∼700 arcmin2 total) from Hubble's Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey. We use BoRG's broad-band imaging in optical and near-infrared to identify N ∼ 1000 photometric candidates at z ∼ 2 through a combination of colour selection and ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with programs 14701, 13767, 12905, 12572, and 11700. This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. AJC acknowledges support from an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. RCL acknowledges support from an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE180101240). We would also like to thank the referee for their constructive and insightful comments.