A survey of galaxy redshifts. V - The two-point position and velocity correlations

Abstract

During the past several years there has been considerable work on large-scale redshift surveys in selected regions of the sky. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) survey is the largest presently available sample. Part of the motivation for the survey was to provide a sample for studies of the general statistics of the galaxy distribution and motions. The present investigation is concerned with the results of an analysis of the two-point position and velocity correlation functions in the CfA sample. It is pointed out that the CfA sample considerably improves the empirical understanding of several important aspects of the galaxy two-point correlation functions. It is known from angular distributions that the spatial correlation function closely approximates a power law. That result is confirmed by direct inversion of the observed function. The bias due to peculiar motion is eliminated by integrating along the line of sight.