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# HST Survey of Clusters in Nearby Galaxies. I. Detection and Photometry

## 1 Introduction

For decades it has been well established that the population of star clusters in the Milky Way is strongly bimodal, with a population of old, massive, and compact globular clusters in the Galactic spheroid and a physically distinct population of less populous open clusters in the disk. However a growing body of observations suggests that this distinction is less pronounced in other types of galaxies, and that the nature of the young and intermediate-age cluster populations differs dramatically in different galactic environments. Early studies of the star cluster populations in the Magellanic Clouds revealed the presence of young and intermediate age “populous blue clusters” or “blue globular clusters” that are absent in the Milky Way (Hodge, 1961), and similar populations have been found in M33 and other nearby late-type galaxies (Christian & Schommer, 1982; Kennicutt & Chu, 1988). Populations of very massive “super star clusters” have been found in starburst galaxies and strongly interacting galaxies (Holtzman et al., 1992; O’Connell, Gallagher, & Hunter, 1994; Schweizer et al., 1996; Whitmore et al., 1999; Zepf & Ashman, 1999), leading to the speculation that many of these objects are progenitors of globular clusters (Ashman & Zepf, 1992).

Other observations obtained over the past 15 years show that the specific frequencies and mass spectra of young stellar associations vary systematically along the Hubble sequence. The most complete data of this kind come from the luminosity functions of giant HII regions, which roughly trace (for luminous objects) the ultraviolet luminosity functions of the embedded stellar associations. The luminosities of the brightest HII regions increase sharply from S0/Sa – Sc and Irr galaxies (Kennicutt, 1988; Caldwell et al., 1991), due to the combination of an increase in both the total numbers of star forming regions per unit galaxy mass, and a change in the shape of the association luminosity function (Kennicutt, Edgar, & Hodge, 1989; Caldwell et al., 1991; Bresolin & Kennicutt, 1997; Youngblood & Hunter, 1999). Reliable measurements of the continuum luminosity functions of the associations themselves are much more difficult to measure, due to the increased difficulty of isolating the associations against the background light of the disk, but studies by Bresolin & Kennicutt (1997) and Larsen & Richtler (2000) are consistent with the results derived from HII region statistics, namely that the frequency and characteristic luminosities of the associations increase in systems with higher star formation rates (SFRs).

Taken together these studies show that the clustering spectrum of star formation is sensitive to the local physical conditions in the interstellar medium. Such variations are of critical importance for understanding galaxy formation and evolution, because the feedback effects of star formation on the ISM via radiation, supernovae, and stellar winds, can vary dramatically depending how concentrated the massive star formation is in space and time (Mac Low & McCray, 1988; Heiles, 1998; Ikeuchi & Norman, 1991; Williams & McKee, 1997).

A critical missing link in this picture is a systematic study of how the populations of massive, bound star clusters vary as functions of galaxy type, ISM properties, or star formation rates. Although the existing observations of selected Local Group galaxies, starburst galaxies, and merger remnants show strong differences in the properties of their young massive cluster populations, the data are fragmentary, and fundamental questions remain about the physical nature and origin of these differences. For example it is not at all clear whether the “super star clusters” or “blue globular clusters” in starburst galaxies are the result of a distinct mode of cluster formation (analogous to the differences between the open and globular cluster systems in the Milky Way), or whether they simply are the extension of a continuous trend in disk cluster populations along the Hubble sequence. Likewise it is unclear whether the strong trends seen in the properties of OB/HII associations in galaxies are also present in the bound cluster populations.

The absence of a substantial body of data on clusters in nearby galaxies is not surprising, because a typical object ($`M10^4M_{}`$, $`R<10`$ pc) becomes effectively stellar in appearance beyond a distance of $``$1 Mpc when observed from the ground, and reliable identification and measurement of such clusters is challenging even with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). However HST does offer the capability to obtain reliable statistics on at least the upper end of the luminosity function of young clusters out to distances of $``$20 Mpc, if high S/N images are analyzed with precision PSF-fitting techniques, and extensive artificial star and cluster simulations are used to quantify the effects of spatial resolution, structured background, and stellar crowding on the cluster identification and photometry.

We have undertaken such a survey of the massive young star cluster populations in nearby spiral and irregular galaxies, using archival imaging from HST. Although we are using a familiar tool (PSF-fitting stellar photometry) for this project, we are devoting this first paper of the series to our photometry techniques because of this application to slightly-extended objects. Although our methods are optimized for the problem of detecting compact star clusters against a background of resolved stars, many aspects of the technique should be applicable to other problems where semi-resolved objects need to be detected against a complex background of point sources. Section 2 is used to outline the theory behind the technique, and Section 3 shows a sample reduction of NGC 3627 (M66). Paper II will describe the statistical analysis we have developed to analyze the color-magnitude-radius information.

Subsequent papers in this series will apply these techniques to a sample of 30 nearby ($`d<25`$ Mpc) spiral and irregular galaxies, in order to quantify the trends in cluster properties along the Hubble sequence, and to a more distant sample of starburst and other peculiar galaxies, to better quantify any differences in the cluster populations in these objects.

## 2 Analysis Technique

Even with the superb resolution possible with the Hubble Space Telescope, the accurate detection and analysis of distant star clusters is a difficult process. At 20 Mpc, a cluster with a core radius of 2 pc has a size smaller than the WFPC2 PSF. After convolving the cluster and a stellar point source with the WFPC2 PSF, the cluster appears less than 20% broader. This difficulty in detection of clusters is further compounded by the two factors. First, the relatively large pixels on WFPC2 (especially the wide field cameras) means that both the star and the cluster have PSFs smaller than one pixel; thus measurement of the FWHM of an object is thus impossible and size can only be estimated by the fraction of light falling outside the central pixel. Second, blends of supergiants and distant background galaxies will also appear slightly broader than stars, and thus additional care must be taken when identifying cluster candidates.

### 2.1 Photometry Algorithm

A very basic question that must first be addressed is the photometry method that we will employ. There are three basic options: aperture photometry, stellar PSF-fitting photometry, and cluster PSF-fitting photometry. Aperture photometry is the simplest; it involves the measurement of the number of counts within a radius of the center of the aperture. As such, it is the least sensitive of the three to systematic errors, as no a priori assumptions are made regarding size or shape of the object being measured. However, aperture photometry is the most sensitive to variable background (as PSF-fitting photometry of any kind gives the highest weight to the central pixels), and most routines do not provide any measurement of star size or shape. Thus aperture photometry is not the best algorithm for use in this project.

The other two possibilities are PSF-fitting routines of two flavors – stellar and cluster. Stellar PSF-fitting routines attempt a simple three-parameter fit for each object; the three parameters being position ($`x`$, $`y`$) and number of counts. In addition to measuring these values for each object, sharpness and roundness values are also returned, generally for the purpose of rejecting non-stellar objects from the photometry list. When searching for clusters, however, these values can also be used to reject non-clusters – stars, blends, background galaxies, etc. In contrast, cluster PSF-fitting photometry attempts a more complex fit of each object. The routine described by Larsen (1999), for example, fits six parameters per object: position, counts, and three size parameters related to major axis, minor axis, and orientation.

While the cluster-fitting approach has the advantage that it directly provides the size and shape of each object, the same information is also contained in the PSF-fitting algorithm output. The only significant differences between the two approaches are the following. Stellar PSF-fitting photometry has the disadvantage that there is a systematic error in the magnitudes caused by assuming a stellar PSF. While this can be easily corrected, it does add an extra step in the reduction process. Cluster PSF-fitting photometry, however, has the disadvantage that the full uncertainties are extremely difficult to measure – generally only the standard error of the brightness measurement is reported. Again, this problem can be solved by adding an extra step to the reduction process.

While we conclude that aperture photometry is not optimal for this project because of its large random errors, we find that either stellar PSF-fitting photometry or cluster PSF-fitting photometry will work equally well. Because of our familiarity with the stellar PSF-fitting package HSTphot (Dolphin, 2000a), we will take that route for our primary reduction procedure, along with an updated version of its CTE corrections (Dolphin, 2000b) available at AED’s web site. The process of photometering the clusters will thus be a two-step process – stellar photometry with HSTphot, followed by determination of the systematic errors caused by use of the stellar PSF.

A final note involves the determination of the background. The typical procedure is to measure the image values in an annulus around the object being measured and use a mode or robust mean algorithm to determine the background value. However, in the galaxies in this survey, we face the difficulty of a rapidly-varying background in which the default HSTphot background annulus is much too large to provide an accurate measurement of the background value at the position in question. Instead, we require a very crude technique in which the background is calculated by averaging the image values in a 2-pixel wide annulus immediately outside the photometry annulus. This technique also avoids the bias inherent in most sky algorithms, which are based on the assumption that the lower values are more indicative of the true sky level, while higher values are caused by stars (which is generally true in uncroweded fields). This also largely eliminates the effect of associations, as any association with a diameter of 5 WFC pixels or more (20 pc at a distance of 10 Mpc) will be subtracted out as background and any cluster within the association photometered properly.

### 2.2 Stellar PSF Determination

Regardless of whether one uses stellar or cluster PSF-fitting photometry, knowledge of the point source (stellar) PSF is the critical first step, as the observed image of any cluster is its intrinsic image convolved with the PSF. For the data we are analyzing in this project, the determination of the stellar PSF is not a trivial process and the process should be described in detail.

HSTphot’s base PSF library is computed using Tiny Tim PSFs (Krist, 1993). The exact algorithm can be found in Dolphin (2000a); the end result is a library of many PSFs per chip per filter. For the planetary camera, a total of 1600 PSFs per filter are measured – $`5\times 5`$ subpixel centerings at $`8\times 8`$ chip positions. Each wide field camera has a factor of four more PSFs, as there are $`10\times 10`$ subpixel centerings at each chip position to compensate for the lager pixels (and thus larger differences between PSFs separated by a fraction of a pixel).

After reduction of many data sets, it was seen that the PSFs showed small systematic errors as a function of position on each chip. This is assumed to be an error on the part of the Tiny Tim models, which while excellent, are obviously not expected to be perfect. In order to compensate, each PSF taken from the library is expanded or contracted slightly (a scale difference of order 2 %, independent of chip), using a quadratic correction term in addition to the expansion necessary to compensate for geometric distortion. (Tiny Tim does not account for geometric distortion.) The 34th row error is also corrected here, according to the prescription given by Dolphin (2000a). These factors do not significantly affect our photometry (at the $`2`$% level), but will significantly affect our cluster discrimination.

The result of this procedure is our best initial guess of the stellar PSF at any position on any chip. However, small focus changes and small pointing errors will modify the stellar PSFs further, and it is necessary to add a correction image to the PSF. This correction image is usually measured from bright, isolated stars, but such objects do not exist in many of our galaxy fields. Instead, we frequently find that the only objects sufficiently bright for PSF determination are clusters; use of these to set the stellar PSF would clearly be disastrous if we are attempting to locate clusters by their size. Instead, we adopt a two-iteration process in our photometry.

In the first iteration, we simply use the library PSFs, plus mean correction images determined from well-resolved Local Group dwarf galaxies, to photometer all stars. As HST pointing errors (when returning to the same position on the sky) are generally much more significant than focus changes, this provides a good first-order approximation. We then plot sharpness vs. magnitude for all recovered objects. The locus of stars is usually obvious in such a plot; and a revised correction image can be calculated such that the mean star sharpness is zero. (The HSTphot sharpness parameter is defined such that a clean star should have a sharpness of zero.) The adjustment to the correction image is modeled as a difference between two PSF functions; one corresponding to the mean FWHM of stars in the image and the other a free parameter. The functional form of the PSF used for this fit was

$$y=\frac{1}{(1+cr^2)^{1.5}}$$
(1)
for the PC and

$$y=\frac{1}{(1+cr^2)^2}$$
(2)
for the WFC; these functions provided the best fits to the PSFs. In both equations, $`c`$ is the parameter being fit and $`r`$ is the distance from the center of the PSF. Thus this is essentially a one-parameter fit that can be made for any galaxy in which even a small number of individual stars are resolved. The photometry is then re-measured, using the adjusted PSF correction image, producing our final stellar photometry for the galaxy.

### 2.3 Systematic Error Correction

As mentioned in Section 2.1, the principal weakness of stellar PSF-fitting photometry in this application is that the attempt to fit a slightly extended object using a stellar PSF will cause a systematic underestimation of the brightness. This effect can be measured (and corrected) in two ways. In this section we discuss an analytical approach; the next section discusses a semi-empirical approach.

Given the HSTphot equations given by Dolphin (2000a), we can calculate the expected photometric consequences of an object being slightly extended. HSTphot uses Dolphin (2000a) equation 8, reproduced here in equation 3, to measure the signal contained in an object. To eliminate gain from the equations, all values will be given in ADU.

$$s=\frac{_{x,y}wt_{x,y}R_{x,y}SPSF_{x,y}/\sigma _{x,y}^2}{_{x,y}wt_{x,y}SPSF_{x,y}^2/\sigma _{x,y}^2},$$
(3)
where $`wt_{x,y}`$ is the weighting factor (generally 1; between 0 and 1 in the outermost pixels to set a circular aperture), $`R_{x,y}`$ is the residual image (original data minus sky and other nearby stars), $`SPSF_{x,y}`$ is the stellar PSF. The expected scatter in a pixel, $`\sigma _{x,y}`$, is given by Dolphin (2000a) equation 10,

$$\sigma _{x,y}^2=R_{x,y}+sky_{x,y}+RN^2,$$
(4)
where $`sky_{x,y}`$ is the mean sky level and $`RN`$ is the read noise in electrons.

For any object, the expected residual in any pixel is given by

$$R_{x,y}=s_0PSF_{x,y},$$
(5)
where $`s_0`$ is the actual number of counts contained while $`PSF_{x,y}`$ is the object’s PSF, a convolution of the stellar PSF and the object’s intrinsic shape. Substituting this into equation 3, we obtain

$$\frac{s_0}{s}=\frac{_{x,y}\frac{wt_{x,y}SPSF_{x,y}^2}{s_0PSF_{x,y}+sky_{x,y}+RN^2}}{_{x,y}\frac{wt_{x,y}PSF_{x,y}SPSF_{x,y}}{s_0PSF_{x,y}+sky_{x,y}+RN^2}}.$$
(6)
The magnitude correction is simply $`dm=2.5\mathrm{log}(s_0/s)`$, so the systematic error (as a function of actual PSF, brightness, and background) can be calculated using equation 6. Likewise, the measured sharpness (and indication of object size) is given by Dolphin (2000a) equations 14 and 15, and is a function of actual PSF, brightness, and background that can be easily evaluated.

Because $`R_{x,y}`$ is randomly distributed with an uncertainty of $`\sigma _{x,y}`$, the magnitude error and sharpness measured this way are expectation values only. The full distribution can most easily be measured using a Monte Carlo test, as $`R_{x,y}`$ appears in both the numerator and the denominator of equation 6.

### 2.4 Artificial Clusters

The more direct approach, in terms of simplicity, is to place a large number of artificial clusters on the image and photometer them – a procedure analogous to artificial star tests in stellar population work. By placing many artificial clusters with a given magnitude and size on each frame, one finds not only the systematic difference between input and output magnitudes as a function of input parameters, but also the completeness fraction, photometry scatter, and mean sharpness.

We have developed a very detailed artificial cluster algorithm. We began by attempting to reconstruct the young LMC cluster NGC 1818, using Girardi et al. (2000) isochrones, a binary fraction of 35%, the WFPC2 PSF, and the profile measured by Elson, Fall, & Freeman (1987),

$$L(r)=L(0)(1+\frac{r}{9}^2)^{1.2},$$
(7)
where $`r`$ is the distance from the cluster center in arcsec and $`L(0)`$ is the central surface brightness. Using these inputs, we were able to quantitatively reproduce the observed CMD and spatial distribution of stars seen in archival WFPC2 images (proposal GO-6277). Confident in this approach, we applied the same technique to add artificial clusters to our NGC 3627 images.

To simplify the problem (and because clusters at the distances we are observing are too small to determine the shape of the profile), we reduced the two structural parameters of Elson, Fall, & Freeman (1987) equation 1 to one parameter by noting that most of the scatter in their measured $`\gamma `$ values (their table 1) is from measurement uncertainties; the values are consistent at the $`1.1\sigma `$ level with $`\gamma =2.53\pm 0.10`$. Thus we will assume a universal cluster profile of

$$L(r)=L(0)(1+\frac{r}{a}^2)^{1.26}.$$
(8)
Converting to core radii ($`r_c`$) using Elson, Fall, & Freeman (1987) equation 22, this becomes

$$L(r)=L(0)(1+0.73\frac{r}{r_c}^2)^{1.26}$$
(9)
and their equation 2 becomes

$$L(<r)=L[1(1+0.73\frac{r}{r_c}^2)^{0.26}],$$
(10)
where $`L(<r)`$ is the luminosity falling within a radius and $`L`$ is the integrated luminosity.

The artificial cluster tests are thus made by placing clusters with a variety of ages, initial masses, and core radii on the image and photometering them. We tests $`20,000`$ such clusters in our NGC 3627 reduction, described below.

We will use these two techniques in very different ways, as each has its strengths and weaknesses. The artificial cluster approach is less prone to error, as one is actually photometering objects on the image. By building up a large library of artificial cluster results, therefore, one can reproduce the observational effects with great accuracy. This will be critical in our statistical analysis, the topic of Paper II. However, orders of magnitude more artificial clusters are required in order to determine the integrated magnitudes and core radius of an observed cluster, a task that is done much more easily through our analytical technique. Thus the analytical technique is used to convert observed properties to physical properties; the artificial cluster technique to do the reverse. A comparison will be made in our NGC 3627 analysis.

### 2.5 Identification and Measurement of Cluster Candidates

Armed with HSTphot photometry and an understanding of how extended PSFs affect the photometry, we now attempt to determine which objects in our photometry list are likely clusters. A library of artificial star tests (placed on the image with a distribution based on the distribution of light on the images in order to correctly sample the observed data) will help to identify the distribution of single stars and blended stars on a sharpness vs. magnitude plot; we can then identify outlying objects on the broad (negative sharpness) side of the diagram as clusters. As we are primarily interested in finding compact clusters (which are round), we can also use roundness information, when available, to help reduce the number of spurious detections caused by blended stars and background galaxies.

Each candidate cluster is characterized by photometry (typically $`VI`$), standard errors in the magnitudes, sky brightness in each frame, and a sharpness measurement. As sharpness is primarily a function of angular size, this value can be determined with reasonable accuracy, which in turn allows a measurement of the integrated $`VI`$ magnitudes (as described in the previous section).

In terms of studying the properties of the cluster population, however, it is more accurate to statistically model the observed data using theoretical models of the cluster population and observational errors as determined by “artificial cluster” tests. The reason is one of accuracy; it is far simpler to use the artificial cluster results (completeness, systematic errors, and scatter) to create a simulated luminosity function and/or color distribution from a model population than it is to deconvolve these corrections from observed data. This approach is identical in concept to the CMD-synthesis approach for studying stellar populations described by Dolphin (2001), and will be explored in Paper II.

We will employ both types of corrections in this study. In general, the properties of a single cluster are best described by the former; while statistical properties can be most easily described by the latter.

## 3 Sample Reduction – NGC 3627

To illustrate our reduction and analysis procedures, we present a detailed description of our study of NGC 3627, using data studied previously by Saha et al. (1999) and Gibson et al. (2000). One of the reasons for this selection is that Gibson et al. (2000) found unusual aperture corrections when studying this galaxy, one possible explanation for which was a large cluster population. Thus, while we expect to examine a large number of objects with no a priori knowledge of cluster properties, NGC 3627 seemed an intriguing prospect for a first test of our cluster-detection methods.

WFPC2 observations of NGC 3627 were taken over a 60-day period between 12 November 1997 and 10 January 1998 for proposal GO-6549 (PI Sandage). The data consist of 24 exposures in F555W (totaling 58800s of integration) and 10 exposures in F814W (totaling 25000s of integration), all images taken in pairs to allow the creation of 17 cosmic ray cleaned (12 F555W and 5 F814W) single-epoch images. Unfortunately (for the purposes of creating a deep image), the images were split between two pointings separated by a few WFC pixels. We therefore created two deep images in each filter using the crclean routine of HSTphot (Dolphin, 2000a), in addition to the 17 single-epoch frames. One of the deep F555W images is shown in Figure 1.

### 3.1 PSF Determination

Because of the lack of bright, isolated stars in the data, we have used the iterative procedure described in Section 2.2 to determine the stellar PSF. An initial photometric pass was made using the multiphot routine from HSTphot, producing stellar photometry (F555W and F814W magnitudes and sharpness) from the default PSFs. The default options for HSTphot were used, except that the local sky value was calculated before each photometry measurement to compensate for the variable background, object classification was turned off to produce more uniform photometry, and aperture corrections and PSF corrections were turned off because of a lack of adequate stars. The “local sky” algorithm is described in section 2; we are confident of its accuracy because we are able to recover artificial stars to a systematic accuracy of better than 1% (systematic) down to $`V=25`$ in WFC2 and $`V=26`$ in the other chips.

Figure 2 shows all PC detections from one of the deep F555W images, with sharpness on the $`y`$-axis and $`V`$ on the $`x`$-axis. (We choose $`V`$ because the amount of exposure time in $`F555W`$ was 2.4 times that in $`F814W`$.) For comparison, Figure 3 shows a similar plot for an image centered on the SMC globular cluster NGC 121, which has more severe crowding but no clusters. It is clear from a comparison of the two figures that a large population of extended objects exists in NGC 3627, which are distinguished by the negative sharpness values. That this is not simply the result of a very broad stellar PSF in these data is demonstrated by the sharpness values of Cepheids found by Saha et al. (1999) and Gibson et al. (2000) (assuming that most of the objects they classified as Cepheids are single stars), which are marked with asterisks in Figure 2 and largely fall near a median sharpness $`0.10`$ (compared with a median sharpness of $`0.22`$ for all objects in the PC). Similar plots for the other three chips, as well as those for the other images, are qualitatively identical, with a stellar population similar to that in Figure 3 plus a population of extended objects. Eliminating the Cepheids that are outliers and using the remainder as PSF stars, we measure the mean values of sharpness, background, and counts, which are given in Table 1. From these values we calculate the PSF adjustments necessary to produce zero mean sharpness, given as the final column of Table 1. Comparing the corrections for the two pointings (assuming the actual PSFs are the same in each pointing), we estimate the rms error in the FWHM corrections to be $`\pm 0.09`$ pixels.

After determining an appropriate PSF adjustment, the photometry was redone. Figure 4 shows the revised plot of sharpness values, with the crosses again indicating our PSF stars (the Cepheids found by previous studies). Although there is some scatter, the PSF stars have a median sharpness of $`0.05`$, significantly improved from the first iteration. (That the sharpness is not exactly zero after applying the corrections from 2.3 is a result of the interdependence of the background level measurement and PSF in the photometry algorithm. An additional iteration would reduce the median sharpness further, but $`0.05`$ is adequate for our purposes.)

### 3.2 Distance and Extinction

One of the selection criteria mentioned in the introduction is that we require the deepest possible images so that cluster sizes can be measured with reasonable signal-to-noise. A majority of the data sets meeting this criterion were taken in Cepheid searches, which require of order 30 deep images in one filter. Because of this, there are two by-products of this cluster survey. First is the opportunity to make a consistency check on our stellar photometry by comparison with that of the previous groups to have analyzed these data. Second is that these objects have well-measured distances and mean extinctions as a result of the Cepheid searches, which will thus improve the accuracy of our cluster measurements.

Thus, although we are searching for clusters, a by-product of our NGC 3627 stellar photometry is photometry of the Cepheids found by Saha et al. (1999) and Gibson et al. (2000). We obtained light curves for the previously-discovered Cepheids using techniques described by Dolphin et al. (2001). Mean magnitudes and periods are given in Table 2. For the six Cepheids well-recovered in all three studies (using a cutoff of $`\text{Q}3`$ for our photometry), we find excellent agreement in the reddening-free magnitudes ($`W=2.45I1.45V`$) – the present photometry and that of Saha et al. (1999) agree to $`0.00\pm 0.04`$ magnitudes; Gibson et al. (2000) is $`0.02\pm 0.06`$ magnitudes fainter. We note that our magnitudes are systematically fainter than the other studies ($`0.2`$ magnitudes in $`V`$ and $`0.1`$ in $`I`$); the cause of this is likely our technique for determining sky values over a rapidly-varying background.

We can determine the distance and extinction of NGC 3627 using the $`V`$ and $`W`$ magnitudes and a Cepheid period-luminosity (P-L) relation. Adopting the Madore & Freedman (1991) P-L relations, we find a true distance modulus of $`(mM)_0=30.09\pm 0.10`$ and an apparent distance modulus of $`(mM)_V=30.67\pm 0.07`$ (and thus a mean extinction of $`A_V=0.58\pm 0.12`$). This is consistent with the literature values of $`(mM)_0=30.17\pm 0.12`$ (Saha et al., 1999) and $`(mM)_0=29.99\pm 0.17`$ (Gibson et al., 2000); both literature values have been corrected to the zero points used in the present work. Adopting the Udalski et al. (1999) P-L relations (adjusted to an assumed LMC distance modulus of 18.50), we find a true distance modulus of $`(mM)_0=29.97\pm 0.09`$ and an apparent distance modulus of $`(mM)_V=30.73\pm 0.07`$ (a mean extinction of $`A_V=0.76\pm 0.11`$). We find this distance inconsistent with the value of $`(mM)_0=29.71\pm 0.08`$ reported by Freedman et al. (2001); the reason for the discrepancy is an unexplained subtraction of 0.18 mags from the Gibson et al. (2000) distance. We believe this is because of the aperture correction discrepancy mentioned by Gibson et al. (2000); if this is indeed the cause, the shorter distance of Freedman et al. (2001) is in error. For either relation, the scatter in $`(mM)_V`$ is mostly accounted for by observational errors, implying that effects of differential reddening are present but not large. We conservatively adopt the average values and increase the uncertainties accordingly, producing a distance modulus of $`(mM)_0=30.03\pm 0.11`$ (corresponding to a distance of $`10.1\pm 0.5`$ Mpc) and mean extinction of $`A_V=0.67\pm 0.15`$.

### 3.3 Cluster Discrimination

We finally turn our attention to the problem of locating the clusters. We will again use the sharpness vs. $`V`$ plots to make this discrimination, beginning with the artificial star tests created by HSTphot’s multiphot routine. From these tests, we find the $`1\sigma `$ lower limit of the artificial star population to be given by

$$\text{sharpness}=0.010.293\times e^{0.46(V28)}$$
(11)
for PC1, WFC3, and WFC4; and

$$\text{sharpness}=0.010.731\times e^{0.46(V28)}$$
(12)
for WFC2. Similar limits can be given for the HSTphot roundness parameter, which is zero for a perfectly-round object and 1 or higher for an elongated object. The $`1\sigma `$ limits for the artificial star populations are given by

$$\text{roundness}=0.01+2.56\times e^{0.46(V28)}$$
(13)
for PC1;

$$\text{roundness}=0.01+4.44\times e^{0.46(V28)}$$
(14)
for WFC2; and

$$\text{roundness}=0.01+2.18\times e^{0.46(V28)}$$
(15)
for WFC3 and WFC4. Figure 5 shows the $`2.5\sigma `$ sharpness envelopes of artificial stars in four chips; Figure 6 shows the $`2\sigma `$ roundness envelopes. An examination of Figure 5 uncovers two notable features. First, that the plot is largely (though not completely) symmetric between positive and negative sharpness values indicates that blending of individual stars (thus creating the appearance of clusters) is not a major factor in these data. We can quantify the contribution of single star blends and photometry errors to our cluster sample by measuring the ratio of the number of artificial stars recovered below the sharpness envelope but inside the roundness envelope to the number recovered within the both envelopes. Limiting the photometry to $`V23.5`$ in WFC2 and $`V24.5`$ in the other chips to reduce contamination, we find contamination fractions of 0.14% in PC1, 0.18% in WFC2, 0.17% in WFC3, and 0.23% in WFC4.

A comparison of Figures 3 and 5 indicates that, for real data, we should add a constant width of 0.05 to the envelope. (Observed data are unfortunately never as well-behaved as simulated data.) This is done for our observed NGC 3627 data, which is plotted in full in Figures 7 and 8. In total, we have 923 “stars” (objects with sharpness and roundness values within the stellar envelopes), which, based on our contamination fractions from the previous paragraph, produce an estimated 1.7 false detections of clusters. In contrast, we have 553 objects falling below the sharpness envelope but within the roundness envelope; the contamination is thus negligible. It is clear that there is also a large population of extended objects at fainter magnitudes, although discrimination is impossible with the accuracy that we have obtained for brighter objects and thus we have chosen to omit them from our sample.

### 3.4 Cluster Properties

As described in section 2.3, we have two methods of measuring cluster sizes and integrated magnitudes from HSTphot photometry – theoretically or semi-empirically. The theoretical approach attempts to convert observational quantities to physical properties; the artificial cluster approach is the opposite. It is important that we test the consistency of these two techniques.

In order to do so, we have added nearly 20,000 artificial clusters to our NGC 3627 images, of which roughly a quarter were recovered with $`V`$ magnitudes and sharpness values that met our selection criteria for clusters. (The low recovery rate is because our input clusters included many that were saturated, too faint to be detected, or too small to be classified as clusters.) We show the sharpness and roundness values for artificial clusters with core radii of 2.5 pc in Figures 9 and 10. The relatively flat and sharp trends in Figure 9 demonstrate that the HSTphot sharpness value is principally a function of cluster radius. The completeness, as a function of both input magnitude and core radius, is shown in Figure 11. We note that there are limited ranges of both cluster radii and magnitudes to which we are sensitive. The radii are limited by the 1-pixel limit on the large end (to minimize false detections of associations), and by the sharpness limit (a function of magnitude) on the small end. The brightness range is restricted by our magnitude cut on one end and pixel saturation on the other.

The $`V`$ corrections and core radii from our analytical corrections, as functions of measured $`V`$ magnitude and sharpness, are shown (for typical PC background levels) in Figures 13 and 14, respectively. The key feature of both of this figures is that both the magnitude correction and core radius are primarily functions of sharpness, allowing a relatively straightforward calculation of cluster properties using the measured magnitudes and sharpness values from HSTphot.

Combining these two approaches, we can determine integrated magnitudes of the recovered artificial clusters using the analytical corrections and compare the clusters’ true magnitudes to their measured magnitudes; this is shown in Figure 12. We found that the $`V`$ magnitudes are well-recovered (the mean error is $`V_{recovered}V_{input}=0.01`$, with rms scatter of 0.12 magnitudes), giving us confidence that this technique will produce reliable luminosity functions.

We then applied the analytical cluster measurement technique to our NGC 3627 objects, determining core radii and integrated magnitudes for the 553 candidate clusters. We find that nine of the objects have recovered core radii greater than 1 pixel; these are eliminated, as we do not trust our stellar PSF-fitting photometry for objects larger than one pixel. This cutoff also eliminates any small associations from the sample. We also eliminated two objects that, from visual inspection, were not clusters (the nucleus of a background galaxy and part of a diffraction spike of a bright star). No other obvious false detections were present. Because of the low contamination level measured ($`12`$ false detections), we will henceforth refer to these 528 objects as “clusters” rather than “candidate clusters”.

As a sanity check, we calculate the contribution of these clusters to the total light of NGC 3627. We measure the combined light of the clusters to have magnitudes of $`V_{clus}=14.75`$ and $`I_{clus}=14.03`$. In comparison, the integrated light in the WFPC2 field is $`V_T=10.38`$ and $`I_T=9.43`$, implying that the fractional contribution of the clusters is 1.8% in $`V`$ and 1.4% in $`I`$. In order to compare with the results of Larsen & Richtler (2000), we must count only the clusters with $`M_V9`$, which account for 1.3% of the $`V`$ luminosity and 1.0% of the $`I`$ luminosity. While this value is higher than those of the Larsen & Richtler (2000) sample, we note that NGC 3627 is an interacting system and thus should be compared with the literature values they present for interacting systems. Comparing with these systems, we find the cluster light fraction we find in NGC 3627 to fall comfortably within the range of values they give ($`V`$ fractions from 0.11% for NGC 3921 to 15% for NGC 3256).

### 3.5 Cluster Population

The properties of our detected clusters are shown in Figures 15 and 16. It is clear from Figure 15 that unambiguous interpretation of these objects in terms of determining age and initial mass (even if there is no differential reddening) is not possible, as $`(VI)`$ is not a monotonic function of cluster age. Rather, a cluster begins its life extremely blue, becomes redder when the first red supergiants form, moves slowly back to the blue, and eventually begins moving redward again. Additionally, for young clusters smaller than $`M_010^5M_{}`$, the number of red supergiants at any given age is quite small, leading to a large intrinsic color dispersion for clusters of a single age. Finally, we note that differential extinction is clearly present, as we see red clusters preferentially in and near the dust lanes. For example, clusters a heavily-extincted region on WFC3 near the WFC2 border have a median $`(VI)`$ color of 1.21, while those in a relatively unobscured region of WFC4 have a median color of $`(VI)=0.49`$. If this color difference is caused solely by extinction, the reddening difference is $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(VI)=0.72`$, or $`A_V=1.75`$. (The Cepheids presumably showed a smaller amount of differential extinction because they are much less luminous, and thus we are more biased against detecting highly-reddened Cepheids than we are against detecting highly-reddened clusters.) Although one generally shows a cluster luminosity function, this is also difficult to interpret, as the rapid evolutionary dimming of a cluster makes it difficult to interpret the luminosity function in terms of cluster masses. Between ages of 10 and 40 Myr, for example, the cluster dims by over a factor of 10 (the exact number depending, of course, on the assumed IMF). Because of these difficulties in interpretation, the primary focus of our survey will be the measurement statistical properties of cluster populations of many systems, rather than an attempt to measure an accurate star formation history or cluster mass function of any one system.

The simplest population to isolate and study is the set of 13 clusters falling beyond the visual extent of the galaxy, which we define to be WFC4 objects with $`y>450`$. The positions and characteristics of these objects are shown in Table 3. Interestingly, despite suffering little or no internal reddening in NGC 3627, these clusters have a median color of $`(VI)=0.96`$, much redder than that of the other NGC 3627 clusters (0.69). We thus conclude that these are predominantly old globular clusters, a conclusion strengthened by their having mean absolute magnitude ($`M_V=8.1`$; rms scatter of 1.0 magnitudes) comparable to that of Galactic globular clusters (Djorgovski, 1993). Very faint or small clusters would not have met our detection criteria.

Without a statistical CMD-synthesis approach (the subject of Paper II), the difficulties mentioned above, as well as incompleteness as a function of $`r_c`$ in addition to the usual $`V`$ and $`I`$, mean that we can only make a semi-quantitative study of Figures 15 and 16. We first note that there is a very strong correlation between positions of the clusters (Figures 17-20) and the spiral structure of NGC 3627. The spiral arm passing through the PC and WFC4, for example, contains 171 (32%) of the detected clusters in just $`10`$% of the WFPC2 field of view. Adding a ring in WFC2 just outside the bulge and an inner spiral arm on the WFC2/WFC3 border, we find that a total of 80% of the clusters are contained in 30% of the image. The concentration is highest for blue ($`VI<0.5`$) clusters, of which 92% fall in these three regions. The color ranges $`0.5<VI0.75`$, $`0.75<VI1.0`$, and $`VI>1.0`$ all have 75% to 77% of the clusters in the three regions. The simplest conclusion from these data is that the clusters with $`(VI)0.5`$ are a young population with minimal reddening, while the other clusters are a mixture of $`75`$% reddened young clusters and $`25`$% older clusters.

Figure 21 shows the raw luminosity functions for all clusters recovered; Figure 22 shows only the 126 clusters with $`(VI)0.5`$. Because of the shallower photometry limit in WFC2 we have split both diagrams into WFC2 and the other chips. Using the deeper PC+WFC3/4 luminosity functions down to $`M_V=8`$, we fit the luminosity functions to

$$\mathrm{log}N=(0.57\pm 0.05)M_V+const$$
(16)
for all clusters, and

$$\mathrm{log}N=(0.49\pm 0.09)M_V+const$$
(17)
for blue clusters only. These fits correspond to luminosity function slopes of $`d\mathrm{log}N/d\mathrm{log}L=1.43\pm 0.12`$ for all clusters and $`1.22\pm 0.23`$ for blue clusters. Although these values are more shallow than those found in NGC 4038/9 by Whitmore et al. (1999), they are similar to the Whitmore et al. (1999) slopes before completeness corrections. Completeness corrections, however, depend significantly on the assumed distribution of cluster sizes. Using large ($`0.75`$ pc $`<r_c<2`$ pc) clusters, we are essentially 100% complete below $`M_V=8`$, thus leaving the LF slopes unchanged. Using small ($`0.25`$ pc $`<r_c<1`$ pc) clusters, we are only $`50\%`$ complete at $`M_V=8`$, and thus the measured LF slope becomes steeper by 0.25. The actual value is likely somewhere in between; we will adopt a preliminary LF slope of $`d\mathrm{log}N/d\mathrm{log}L=1.53\pm 0.15`$ for this data set. A detailed determination of the cluster initial mass function employing population synthesis techniques will be the subject of Paper II.

## 4 Summary

The question of modes of cluster formation is presently an open one. While massive young clusters that are potentially the progenitors of globular clusters have been observed only in galaxies with very high star formation rates (interacting and starburst systems), it is unclear whether this is caused by a different mode of star formation than that observed in our Galaxy, or whether it is simply an increase in cluster formation rates of clusters of all masses. In order to answer this question, we have begun a survey of nearby galaxies in which we will study the cluster properties of each, as well as trends that appear as functions of galaxy properties.

Because robust photometric techniques for slightly-extended objects (core radius smaller than the PSF) are not yet established, we have detailed the difficulties and methods that we have developed for this task. Although our techniques are optimized for the specific task of measuring slightly-extended clusters on top of a rapidly-varying background, we believe the principles used here can be applied to other similar problems. Specifically, our sky measurement algorithm can be used for any photometry (stellar or extended-object) on a rapidly-varying background, while our use of sharpness to measure the image shape can be used to PSF determination as well as object size determination.

We have applied these techniques to NGC 3627, for which deep observations (34 orbits in F555W and F814W) are available in the HST archive. We find that the stellar PSF-fitting package HSTphot works extremely well for our task, both in its ability to accurately photometer previously-detected Cepheids and in its usefulness in discriminating and photometering clusters.

For the Cepheids, we recover 28 Cepheids found in previous studies (Saha et al., 1999; Gibson et al., 2000). Measuring their periods and mean magnitudes, we find a distance consistent with those measured by those authors, but inconsistent with the final value used by Freedman et al. (2001).

We have located 528 clusters in NGC 3627, which account for $`12`$% of the galaxy’s total light in $`V`$ and $`I`$. We find that the blue cluster population traces NGC 3627’s spiral pattern extremely closely, while redder clusters less so. This is likely because of a population of halo globular clusters, seen clearly beyond the visual extent of the disk but likely appearing throughout the image as foreground objects. Red clusters are also preferentially seen in and near dust lanes; we interpret these as reddened young clusters. We measure a preliminary cluster luminosity function of $`d\mathrm{log}N/d\mathrm{log}L=1.53\pm 0.15`$; a definitive result will come from the statistical analysis that will be presented in Paper II.

Support for this work was provided by NASA through grant number AR-09196.01 from the Space Telescope Science Institute. All of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Multimission Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (MAST). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555.


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# Molecular Gas Around Young Stellar Clusters

## 1. Introduction

Surveys for young stars in molecular clouds have shown that most stars do not form in isolation, but in aggregates ranging from the widely dispersed groups of stars found in the Taurus cloud, to the clusters found in Orion, and ultimately to the “superclusters” such as NGC 3603. There is an enormous range in the richness of these stellar groups/clusters, from several stars in Taurus to more than a thousand stars in NGC 3603, all within regions of a few cubic parsecs. To understand this enormous range in richness and the dependence of the richness on the molecular gas environment, we have undertaken a comparative study of both the molecular and stellar components of a sample of 31 clusters within 1 kpc of the Sun.

## 2. Observations

We have obtained maps of the molecular gas surrounding the two young stellar clusters in 13CO 1–0 and C18O 1–0 at 45′′ resolution with the FCRAO 14m telescope. These observations were followed up with higher resolution (30′′) C18O 2–1 On-the-Fly (OTF) maps, obtained at the Heinrich Hertz Telescope (HHT), operated by the Submillimeter Telescope Observatory (SMTO).

Figure 1 shows contours of the C18O 2–1 emission overlaid on a 2MASS K-band image. The dense gas traced by the C18O seems to trace the ring structure apparent in the stellar component of Mon R2. The gas around GGD 12-15 appears elongated in the east-west direction.

The table below compares the gas and stellar properties of the two clusters. The stellar properties are taken from Carpenter (2000), while the gas properties are derived from our C18O observations.

Figure 2 shows maps of the C18O line width, centered on the same position as fig. 1 . The ring-like morphology seen in the K-band image of Mon R2 can also be clearly seen in the line-width map. The horizontal line apparent at a Dec offset $``$ +100′′ is an artifact due to lower signal–noise ratio in this region of the map. There is also a region of low line-width north-east of the stellar cluster. It is harder to pick out any structure in the noisier line-width map of GGD 12-15, but it does appear to increase towards the centre.

## References

Carpenter, J.M. 2000, AJ, 120, 3139


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# Large scale structures in the Early SDSS: Comparison of the North and South Galactic strips

## 1. Introduction

The SDSS collaboration have recently made an early data release (EDR) publicly available. The EDR contains around a million galaxies distributed within a narrow strip of 2.5 degrees across the equator. As the strip crosses the galactic plane, the data is divided into two separate sets in the North and South Galactic caps. The SDSS collaboration has presented a series of analysis (Zehavi etal 2002, Scranton etal 2002, Connolly etal 2002, Dodelson etal 2002, Tegmark etal 2002, Szalay etal 2002) of large scale angular clustering on the North Galactic strip, which contains data with the best seeing conditions in the EDR. Gaztañaga (2001, hereafter Ga01) presented a study of bright ($`g^{}20`$) SDSS galaxies in the South Galactic EDR strip, centering the analysis on the comparison of clustering to the APM Galaxy Survey (Maddox etal 1990).

In this paper we want to compare and combine the bright ($`r^{}19`$ or $`g^{}20`$) galaxies in North and South strips to make a detailed comparison between North and South and also to the APM. Do the North and South strips have similar clustering? How do they compare to previous analyses? What does the EDR tell us about structure formation in the Universe? Answering these questions will help us understanding the SDSS EDR data and, at the same time, will give us the opportunity to test how reliable are conclusions drawn from previous galaxy surveys. In particular regarding the shape of the 2-point function (Maddox etal 1990, Gaztañaga & Juszkiewicz 2001) and higher order correlations (eg Bernardeau et al. 2002, and references therein).

This paper is organized as follows. In section §2 we present the samples used and the galaxy selection and number counts. Section §3 shows the comparison of the 2 and 3-point correlation functions. We end with some discussion and a listing of conclusions.

## 2. SDSS samples and pixel maps

We follow the steps described in Gaztañaga (2001, hereafter Ga01). We download data from the SDSS public archives using the SDSS Science Archive Query Tool (sdssQT, http://archive.stsci.edu/sdss/software/). We select objects from an equatorial SGC (South Galactic Cap) strip 2.5 wide ($`1.25<DEC<1.25`$ degrees.) and 66 deg. long ($`351<RA<56`$ deg.), which will be called EDR/S, and also from a similar NGC (North Galactic Cap) 2.5 wide and 91 deg. long ($`145<RA<236`$ deg.), which will be called EDR/N. These strips (SDSS numbers 82N/82S and 10N/10S) correspond to some of the first runs of the early commissioning data (runs 94/125 and 752/756) and have variable seeing conditions. Runs 752 and 125 are the worst with regions where the seeing fluctuates above 2”. Runs 756 and 94 are better, but still have seeing fluctuations of a few tenths of arc-second within scales of a few degrees111See http://www-sdss.fnal.gov:8000/skent/seeingStatus.html or Figure 4 in Scranton etal 2001. These seeing conditions could introduce large scale gradients because of the corresponding variations in the photometric reduction (eg star-galaxy separation) that could manifest as large scale number density gradients (see Scranton et al 2001 for a detailed account of these effects). We will test our results against the possible effects of seeing variations, by restricting the analysis to runs 756 and 94, and by using a seeing mask (see §3.3).

We will also consider a sample which includes both the North and South strips, this will be called: EDR/(N+S). Note that the clustering from this sample will not necessarily agree with the mean of EDR/N and EDR/S, eg EDR/(N+S) $``$ EDR/N+EDR/S (see below).

We first select all galaxies brighter than $`u^{}=22.3,g^{}=23.3,r^{}=23.1,i^{}=22.3,z^{}=20.8`$, which corresponds to the SDSS limiting magnitudes for 5 sigma detection in point sources (York etal. 2000). Galaxies are found from either the $`1\times 1`$, $`2\times 2`$ or $`4\times 4`$ binned CCD pixels and they are de-blended by the SDSS pipeline (Lupton etal 2001). Only isolated objects, child objects (resulting from deblending) and objects on which the de-blender gave up are used in constructing our galaxy catalog (see Yasuda etal 2001).

There are about 375000 objects in our sample classified as galaxies in the EDR/S and about 504000 in the EDR/N. Figure 1 shows the number counts (surface density) for all these 879000 galaxies as a function of the magnitude in each band, measured by the SDSS modified Petrosian magnitudes $`m_u^{}`$, $`m_g^{}`$, $`m_r^{}`$, $`m_i^{}`$ and $`m_z^{}`$ (see Yasuda et al 2001 for a discussion of the SDSS counts). Continuous diagonal lines show the $`10^{0.6m}`$ expected for a low redshift homogeneous distribution with no k-correction, no evolution and no-extinction.

We next select galaxies with SDSS modified Petrosian magnitudes to match the APM selection: $`17<B_J<20`$, which corresponds to a mean depth of $`𝒟400`$ Mpc/h. We try different prescriptions. We first apply the following transformation to mimic the APM filter $`B_J`$:

$$B_J=g^{}+0.193(g^{}r^{})+0.115$$
(1)
This results from combining the relation $`B_J=B0.28(BV)`$ (Maddox etal 1990) with expressions (5) and (6) in Yasuda etal (2001). As the mean color $`g^{}r^{}0.7`$ the above relation gives a mean $`B_Jg^{}+0.25`$, which roughly agrees with the magnitude shift used in Ga01. For the $`17<B_J<20`$ range (using the above transformation) we find $`N123000`$ galaxies in the EDR/(N+S), with a galaxy surface which is very similar to the one in the APM (only $`5\%`$ larger after substraction of the $`5\%`$ star-merger contribution in the APM). In any case, this type of color transformations between bands are not accurate and they only work in some average statistical sense. The uncertainties are even larger when we recall that the APM uses fix isophotal aperture, while SDSS is using Petrosian magnitudes, a difference that can introduce additional color terms and surface brightness dependence.

It is much cleaner to use a single SDSS band. We should use $`g^{}`$ which is the closest to the APM $`\lambda _{B_J}4200A`$ ($`\lambda _u^{}3560`$, $`\lambda _g^{}4680`$ and $`\lambda _r^{}6180`$). But how do we decide the range of $`g^{}`$ to match the APM $`17<B_J<20`$? We try two approaches. One is to look for the magnitude interval that has the same counts, as done in Ga01. The resulting range is $`16.8<g^{}<19.8`$. This gives a reasonable match to the clustering amplitudes in the EDR/S and EDR/N. But there is no reason to expect a perfect match: the selection function and resulting depth is different for different colors. The other approach is to fix the magnitude range, ie $`17<g^{}<20`$, rather than the counts. This produces $`N157000`$ galaxies, which corresponds $`25\%`$ higher counts than the APM. This does not necessarily mean that this sample is deeper than the APM, because of the intrinsic different in color selection, K-corrections and possible color evolution.

Finally, we produce equal area projection pixel maps of various resolutions similar to those made in Ga01. Except for a few tests, all the analyses presented here correspond to 3’.5 resolution pixels. On making the pixel maps we mask out about 1.’75 of the EDR sample from the edges, which makes an integer number of pixels in our equatorial projection. This also avoids potential problem of the galaxy photometry on the edges (although higher resolution maps show very similar results, indicating that this is not really a problem).

### 2.1. Galactic extinction

The above discussion ignored Galactic extinction. It should be noted that the standard extinction law $`A_b=C(\mathrm{csc}b1)`$ with $`C=0.1`$ was used for the APM photometry. This is a very small correction: $`A_b=0`$ at the poles ($`b=90`$ deg) and the maximum $`A_b0.03`$ at the lowest galactic declination ($`b50`$ deg). This is in contrast to the Schlegel etal (1998) extinction maps which have significant differential extinction $`E(BV)0.020.03`$ even at the poles. The corresponding total absorption $`A_b`$ for the $`B_J`$ band according to Table 6 in Schlegel etal (1998) is four times larger: $`A_b0.080.12`$. This increases up to $`A_b0.20.3`$ at galactic declination $`b50`$. Thus, using the Schlegel etal (1998) extinction correction has a large impact in the number counts for a fix magnitude range. The change can be roughly accounted for by shifting the mean magnitude ranges by the mean extinction, eg $`0.2`$ magnitudes in $`B_J`$. It is therefore important to know what extinction correction has been applied when comparing different surveys or magnitude bands.

Despite the possible impact on the quoted magnitudes (and therefore counts), extinction has little impact on clustering, at least for $`r^{}<21`$ (see Scranton etal 2001 and also Tegmark etal 1998). This is fortunate because of the uncertainties involved in making the extinction maps and its calibration. Moreover, the Schlegel etal (1998) extinction map only has a 6’.1 FWHM, which is much larger than the individual galaxies we are interested on. Many dusty regions have filamentary structure (with a fractal pattern) and large fluctuations in extinction from point to point. One would expect similar fluctuations on smaller (galaxy size) scales, which introduces further uncertainties to individual corrections.

Here we decided as default not to correct for extinction, because this will be closer to the APM analysis and makes little effect on clustering at the depths and for the issues that will be explored here. This has been extensively checked for EDR/N by Scraton et al. (2001). We have also check this here in all EDR/N, EDR/S and EDR/(N+S), see §3.3

To avoid confusion with other prescriptions by the SDSS collaboration we will use $`z^{},i^{},r^{},g^{},u^{}`$ for ’raw’, uncorrected magnitudes, and $`z^{},i^{},r^{},g^{},u^{}`$ for extinction corrected magnitudes. For example, according to Schlegel etal (1998) $`r^{}=18`$ corresponds roughly to an average extinction corrected $`r^{}17.9`$ for a mean differential extinction $`E(BV)0.03`$.

## 3. Clustering comparison

To study sampling and estimation biasing effects on the SDSS clustering estimators we have cut different SDSS-like strips out of the APM map (see Ga01). For the APM, we have considered a $`17<B_J<20`$ magnitude slice in an equal-area projection pixel map with a resolution of $`3.5`$ arc-min, that covers over $`4300`$ $`deg^2`$ around the SGC. The APM sample can fit about 25 strips similar to EDR/S and 16 similar to EDR/N. The APM can not cover the combined EDR/(N+S) as it extends across the whole equatorial circle. But we can select several subsamples consisting of sets of 2 strips, one like EDR/S and another one like EDR/N well separated within the APM map, eg by at least $`10`$ degrees. As correlations are negligible on angular scales $`>10`$ degrees, this simulates well the combined EDR/(N+S) analysis. To study sampling effects over individual scans we also extract individual SDSS-like CCD scans out of the APM pixel maps. In all cases we correct the clustering in the APM maps for a $`5\%`$ contamination of randomly merged stars (see Maddox etal 1990), ie we scale fluctuations up by $`5\%`$ (see also Gaztañaga 1994).

### 3.1. The angular 2-point function

We first study the angular two-point function. Figure 3 shows the results from the EDR/S (long-dashed), EDR/N (short-dash) and EDR/(N+S) (continuous lines). As mentioned above, the clustering from the combined sample EDR/(N+S) will not necessarily agree with the mean of EDR/N and EDR/S (shown as dotted lines) for several reasons: estimators are not linear, neither are sampling errors and local galaxy fluctuations are estimated around the combined mean density (rather than the mean density in each subsample). As shown in Figure 3 the two estimators yield different results. In general for a well calibrated survey the whole, ie EDR/(N+S), should give better results than the sum of the parts, so that we take the EDR(N+S) results as our best estimate.

In general, the results for the $`w_2`$ shape in EDR/N in Figure 3 agree well with the corresponding comparison in Fig.1 of Connolly etal (2002), with a sharp break to zero around 2-3 degrees. The results for EDR/S agree well with Ga01, showing a flattening at similar scales. Note how EDR/(N+S) $`17<B_J<20`$ (shown in the first panel) are about $`15\%`$ higher in amplitude that the APM (this is not a very significant discrepancy for the EDR/S errors shown in the plot, but it is when compared to the EDR/(N+S) errors from the APM, shown in panels 2 and 3). As mentioned above this is not totally surprising as the magnitude conversion in Eq. could only works on some average sense. Results for $`16.8<g^{}<19.8`$ are intermediate between $`B_J`$ and $`17<g^{}<20`$.

Scranton et al 2002 studied the SDSS systematic effects with $`r^{}`$ colors, and found that systematic effects had negligible contributions to $`w_2(\theta )`$ for $`r^{}<21`$ (eg see their figure 15). The APM has a depth corresponding to $`r^{}18.5`$, which is almost 3 magnitudes brighter than the above limit. Nevertheless, for comparison, we also study the $`w_2(\theta )`$ shape in $`r^{}`$. The brighter sample of $`r^{}=1819`$ in Connolly etal (2001) is slightly deeper that the APM, with $`z0.18`$ rather than $`z0.15`$ for the APM. We find that $`r^{}=17.818.8`$ is the closest one magnitude $`r^{}`$ bin in depth to the APM. Because of the average extinction this corresponds roughly to extinction corrected $`r^{}=17.6518.65`$. This sample has about $`40\%`$ fewer galaxies (per square degree) than the APM, presumably because of the color correction and differences in the photometric selection. Results for this $`r^{}`$ sample (shown in the third panel of Figure 3) agree quite well with the APM amplitude. Here the errors are from APM subsamples similar to EDR/N (note how they are slightly smaller than the errors in the APM shown in the first panel of Figure 3, as expected from the smaller area of EDR/S).

Overall, we see how the shape of the 2-point function in all EDR samples remains remarkably similar for the different magnitudes. This is despite the fact that the mean counts change by more than $`60\%`$ from case to case. The amplitude of $`w_2`$ changes by about $`20\%`$ from one SDSS sample to the other, but the shape remains quite similar. The best match to the APM amplitude is for the $`17<g^{}<20`$, which will be taken for now on as our reference sample.

### 3.2. $`w_2(\theta )`$ in central scans 756 and 94

As a test for systematics, we study $`w_2(\theta )`$ using only the central region of the CCD in scans 756 (North EDR) and 94 (South EDR). The seeing during run 756 is the best in the EDR with only small fluctuations around 1”.4. Regions in the SDSS where the seeing degraded to worse than 1”.5 are marked for re-observations. As this includes most of the EDR data one may worry that some of the results presented here could be affected by these seeing variations . As mentioned above this has been shown not be the case, at least for $`r^{}<21`$ (Scranton etal 2001).

We estimate $`w_2(\theta )`$ using only galaxies in the central regions of the CCD in scans 756 (the best of EDR/N) and 94 (the best of EDR/S). Figure 4 shows a piece of this new data set for the EDR/N. As can be seen in the figure (bottom panel) we only consider the central part of 756 to avoid any contamination from the CCD edges. This new data set contains only $`30\%`$ of the area (and of the galaxies) from the whole strip.

Left panel in Figure 6 compares the results of $`w_2(\theta )`$ for the individual scans against the whole strip for all EDR/S, EDR/N and EDR/(N+S). As can be seem in this Figure, individual scans (dotted lines) agree very well with the corresponding overall strip values. Possible systematic errors seem quite small. In fact, the agreement is striking after a visual comparison of the heavy masking in the pixel maps of Figure 4 (which shows the actual resolution use for the $`w_2(\theta )`$ estimation in Fig. 6). One would naively expect some more significant sampling variations when we use only 1/3 of the data. But nearby regions are strongly correlated and we can get very similar results with only a fraction of the data (this is also nicely shown in Figures 13-15 of Scranton etal 2001). This test shows the power of doing configuration space analysis (as opposed to Fourier space analysis, eg see Scoccimarro etal 2001). It also illustrates that our estimator for $`w_2(\theta )`$ performs very well on dealing with masked data.

### 3.3. Seeing and reddening mask

Fig.7 shows athe pixels EDR/N and EDR/S with a seeing better than 2 arc-sec. and 0.2 maximum extinction. Pixels with larger seeing or larger extinction are masked out. As apparent in the Figure there is a significant reduction of the available area after the masking. Right panel of Figure 6 compares the results of $`w_2(\theta )`$ for the new masked maps with the results for the individual scans, for all EDR/S, EDR/N and EDR/(N+S). There is now a much better agreement between the EDR/N and EDR/S, which suggest that the discrepancies between EDR/N and EDR/S apparent in the left panel of Fig.7 are due to these systematic effects. The number of available pixels ($`30\%`$ of the total) is comparable to the ones in individual scans (dotted line), which indicates that samplings errors can not account for the observed differences between the dotted and continuous lines. The biggest change is apparent in EDR/S, which is the smallest sample and the one subject to worst seeing conditions. Most of the difference is due to the seeing rather than the extinction mask.

We find similar results for slightly lower cuts in seeing and extinction, but the number of pixels in EDR/S decrease very quickly as we lower the seeing, and sampling errors dominate over any possible systematics. Thus such a tests are not very conclusive.

Note that the APM absolute errors should be larger for the masked data, as there are less area available. Note also that the mean EDR/(N+S) is lower (continuous middle line in the right panel of Figure 6). The absolute samplings error (as oppose to the relative errors) approach a constant on $`\theta 1`$ deg. scale (e.g. Fig.8 and Eq.8). All of this indicates that the final relative errors should be larger. Thus, taking into account these considerations, the discrepancies between EDR/N and EDR/S are not significant anymore, and certainly within 2-sigma errors from the APM.

### 3.4. Variance and covariance

Bernstein (1994) has calculated the covariance in the angular 2-point function $`w_iw(\theta _i)`$, where $`\theta _i`$ correspond to the bins in angular separation (for a more general discussion on errors see §6 in Bernardeau et al. 2002). We will consider two main sources of errors. One is due to the finite number of particles $`𝒩`$ in the distribution. This error is usually called the ”Poisson error”, and goes as: $`1/𝒩`$. The second is due to the finite size of the sample, which is characterized by:

$$w_\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_1\mathrm{\Omega }_2w(\theta _{12})$$
(2)
the mean correlation function over the solid angle of the survey $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. This gives the uncertainty in the mean density on the scale of the sample, which is constrained to be zero in most estimators, as the mean density is calculated from the same sample, i.e. estimators suffer from the integral constraint. In general, this integral is not zero, but we need a clustering model or a larger survey, such as the APM, to calculate its value. For the EDR size, $`w_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is dominated by the value of $`w(\theta )`$ on the scale of the strip width: $`w(\theta =5deg)`$. From the APM $`w(\theta )`$ we find $`10^2`$ for EDR/S. For the APM size itself, this integral should be significantly smaller, but its value is quite uncertain. For both for EDR and APM sub-samples, the Poisson errors $`1/𝒩10^510^6`$ are typically smaller than the sampling errors. Neglecting Poisson errors and using $`w_Nq_Nw^{N1}`$ for higher order correlations , Bernstein (1994) found:

$$Cov(w_i,w_j)g(\gamma )w_\mathrm{\Omega }^2+\beta w_\mathrm{\Omega }(w_iw_\mathrm{\Omega })(w_jw_\mathrm{\Omega })$$
(3)
where $`g(\gamma )`$ is a geometric term of order unity for power-law correlations $`w(\theta )A\theta ^\gamma `$. In the strict hierarchical model, $`w_N=q_Nw^{N1}`$, we have $`\beta =4(12q_3+q_4)`$. As this model is a rough approximation222It neglects the configuration and the scale dependence of $`q_3`$ and $`q_4`$, which is only a good approximation on non-linear scales, see Bernardeau et al. 2002 we will take $`\beta `$ to be a constant, which will be fitted using the simulations. The corresponding expression for the variance (diagonal of the covariance) is:

$$Var(w_i)g(\gamma )w_\mathrm{\Omega }^2+\beta w_\mathrm{\Omega }(w_iw_\mathrm{\Omega })^2.$$
(4)
In Fig.8 we compare the square root of the above expression $`\mathrm{\Delta }w(\theta _i)\sqrt{Var(w_i)}`$ with the RMS errors in $`w_i`$ from the dispersion in 10 APM sub-samples that simulate the geometry of the EDR/S sample. We find that a value of $`\beta 4`$ fits well the above theoretical model to the errors in the simulations. In principle, both $`g`$ and $`\beta `$ could be a function of scale, but the model seems to match well the simulations, at least in the range $`\theta 0.14.0`$ deg. On smaller scales we are approaching the map pixel resolution and we should also include the variance due to the shot-noise and finite cell-size. On scales larger that $`\theta 4deg`$ we approach the EDR strip size and the integral constrain becomes important. As we have not corrected for the integral constrain, we do not expect our errors to follow the predictions on large scales. In the intermediate regime the model seems to work quite well.

Bernstein (1994) has shown, using Montecarlo simulations, that the model in Eq.3 works well for the covariance matrix. In his Fig.2 it shows the covariance between adjacent bins $`Cov(w_i,w_{i+1})`$. These predictions should work well here if we compare alternative bins $`Cov(w_i,w_{i+2})`$ instead of adjacent bins, as we are using 12 bins per decade as opposed to 6 bins per decade in Bernstein (1994). The resulting covariance matrix is close to singular and most of its principal components are degenerate. Thus, a significant test estimation is not just straight forward.

With the help of Montecarlo simulations Bernstein (1994) concluded that the effect of the off diagonal errors is small when fitting parametric models, in particular a power-laws to $`w(\theta )`$. He find similar results for the amplitude and the slope when using the simple diagonal chi-square minimization or the of the principal components of the full covariance matrix. Both the level of clustering and the errors in his Montecarlo simulations are quite similar to the ones presented here (compare left panel of our Fig.8 to his Fig.1). Thus we can extend the conclusions of Bernstein (1994) to the present analysis and, for simplicity, ignore the off-diagonal errors in the covariance matrix. In order to make sure that the same conditions apply, we should use only every other bin in fitting models.

### 3.5. An inflection point in $`w_2(\theta )`$?

Right panel of Fig.8 shows the logarithmic slope:

$$\gamma (r)=\frac{d\mathrm{log}w_2(\theta )}{d\mathrm{log}\theta }$$
(5)
of $`w_2(\theta )`$ for the estimation in the second panel Fig.3. The mean and errors in the top panel correspond to APM subsamples similar to the EDR/S. Within these errors, both the APM and SDSS data are compatible with a power low $`w_2(\theta )\theta ^\gamma `$ with $`\gamma `$ between $`\gamma 0.6`$ and $`\gamma 0.8`$ (shown as two horizontal dotted lines), in good agreement with Table 1 in Connolly etal (2001) and Maddox (1990). Even with this large errors there is a hint of a systematic flattening of $`\gamma `$ between 0.1 and 1.0 degrees in all subsamples. This hint is clearer in the combined analysis EDR/(N+S) where the errors (according to the APM subsamples) are significantly smaller. This flattening, of only $`\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma 0.10.2`$ as we move from 0.1 to 1.0 degrees, it is apparent in all the APM and SDSS subsamples. It is reassuring that even at this detailed level all data agree within the errors. It is also apparent from the top right panel of Fig.8 that the errors are too large to detect this effect separately in EDR/S or EDR/N, so it depends on the good calibration of EDR across the disjoint EDR/N and EDR/S samples.

The best fit to a power law model gives $`\chi ^220`$ for 10 degrees of freedom, which corresponds to a $`3\%`$ confidence level for a power law to be a good fit. If we do not use adjacent bins (see above §3.4) we find $`\chi ^219`$ for 5 degrees of freedom, which gives an even lower confidence level.

### 3.6. Smoothed 1-point Moments

We next compare the lower order moments of counts in cells of variable size $`\theta `$ (larger than the pixel map resolution). We follow closely the analysis of Ga01. Fig. 9 shows the variance of fluctuations in density counts $`\delta \rho /\overline{\rho }1`$ smoothed over a scale $`\theta `$: $`\overline{w_2}<\delta ^2(\theta )>`$, which is plotted as a function of the smoothing radius $`\theta `$. The errors show 1-sigma confidence interval for APM subsamples with EDR/(N+S) size. The individual results in each subsample are strongly correlated so that the whole curve for each subsample scales up and down within the errors, ie there is a strong covariance at all separations due to large scale density fluctuations (eg see Hui & Gaztañaga 1999 or Eq.2 above). The EDR/(N+S) results (continuous and dotted lines) match perfectly well the APM results, in agreement to what we found for the 2-point function above. The size of the errorbars for EDR/N and EDR/S (not shown) are almost a factor of two larger than for EDR/(N+S), so that they are also in agreement with the APM within their respective sampling errors.

Right panel of Fig. 9 shows the corresponding comparison for the normalized angular skewness:

$$s_3(\theta )\frac{<\delta ^3(\theta )>}{<\delta ^2(\theta )>^2}\frac{\overline{w_2}(\theta )}{\overline{w_3}(\theta )}$$
(6)
All SDSS $`g^{}`$ sub-samples (top panel) for $`s_3`$ show an excellent agreement with the APM at the smaller scales (in contrast with the EDSGC results, see Szapudi & Gaztañaga 1998). On larger scales the SDSS values are smaller, but the discrepancy is not significant given the strong covariance of individual APM subsamples. Note how the effect of the seeing mask (dotted line) is to increase the the amplitude of $`S_3`$, this could be partially due to systematic errors, but it could also result from the smaller, $`1/3`$, sampling resulting from removing the pixels with bad seeing.

Bottom panel of the left of Fig. 9 shows the corresponding results in $`r^{}`$. At the smallest scale (of about 2’ or 240 Kpc/h) we find some slight discrepancies (at only the 1-sigma level for a single point) with the APM. The $`r^{}`$ results seem a scaled up version of the $`g^{}`$ results, which indicates that the apparent differences could be explained in terms of sampling effects (with strong covariance). Note also that the value of $`s_3`$ seems to peak at slightly larger scale. This could indicate another explanation for this discrepancy. Szapudi & Gaztañaga 1998 argued that such peak could be related to some systematic (or physical) effect related to the de-blending of large galaxies. It is reasonable to expect that such effect could be strong function of color, as $`g^{}`$ and $`r^{}`$ trace different aspects of the galaxy morphology. We have also checked that results of individual scans 756 and 94 (and also 756+94) give slightly higher results, closer to the $`r^{}`$ results than to the mean $`g^{}`$. Higher results are also found for the results with the seeing mask (eg dotted line in top right panel of Fig. 9). This goes in the right direction if we think that de-blending gets worse with bad seeing, but it could also be affected by sampling fluctuations (because of the smaller area in the scans or masked data).

Similar results are found for higher order moments. As we approach the scale of $`2`$ degrees, the width of our strip, it becomes impossible to do counts for larger cells and it is better to study the 3-point function.

### 3.7. 3-point Correlation function

Following Ga01 we next explore the 3-point function, normalized as:

$$q_3\frac{w_3(\theta _{12},\theta _{13},\theta _{23})}{w_2(\theta _{12})w_2(\theta _{13})+w_2(\theta _{12})w_2(\theta _{23})+w_2(\theta _{13})w_2(\theta _{23})}$$
(7)
where $`\theta _{12}`$, $`\theta _{13}`$ and $`\theta _{23}`$ correspond to the sides of the triangle form by the 3 angular positions of $`\delta _1\delta _2\delta _3`$. Here we will consider isosceles triangles, ie $`\theta _{12}=\theta _{13}`$, so that $`q_3=q_3(\alpha )`$ is given as a function of the interior angle $`\alpha `$ which determines the other side of the triangle $`\theta _{23}`$ (Frieman & Gaztañaga 1999).

We also consider the particular case of the collapsed configuration $`\theta _{23}=0`$, which corresponds to $`<\delta _1\delta _2^2>`$ and is normalized in slightly different way (see also Szapudi & Szalay 1999):

$$c_{12}\frac{<\delta _1\delta _2^2>}{<\delta _1\delta _2><\delta _1^2>}2q_3(\alpha =0).$$
(8)
Figure 10 shows $`c_{12}`$ from the collapsed 3-point function.

Note the strong covariance in comparing the EDR/N to EDR/S. The unmasked EDR/(N+S) results agree well with the APM within errors, but the results with the seeing mask (shown as the dotted line) show significant departures at small scales.

Right panel in Fig. 10 shows the reduced 3-point function $`q_3`$ for isosceles triangles of side $`\theta _{12}=\theta _{13}=0.5`$ degrees. Here there seems to be differences between APM and SDSS, but its significance is low because the errors at a single point is only 1-sigma and that there is a strong covariance between points, eg note how the EDR/S and EDR/N curves are shifted around the EDR(N+S) one. The APM seems closer to the EDR/N. This is a tendency that is apparent in previous figures, but it is only on $`q_3`$ where the discrepancies starts to look significant. When estimation biases are present in the subsample mean, errors tend to be unrealisticly small, that is errors are also biased down (see Hui & Gaztañaga 1999).

## 4. Discussion and conclusions

We have first explored the different uncertainties involved in the comparison of the SDSS with the APM, such as the band or magnitude range to use. After several test, we conclude that clustering in both the North and South EDR strips (EDR/N and EDR/S) agree well in amplitude and shape with the APM on scales $`\theta <2`$ degrees. But we find inconsistencies with the APM $`w_2(\theta )`$ at the level of $`90\%`$ significance on any individual scale at $`\theta >2`$ degrees. This inconsistencies are larger than $`90\%`$ when we compare EDR/S to EDR/N at any given point at $`\theta >2`$ degrees (compare the short and long dashed lines in left panel of Fig.6). We have shown that this is mostly due to systematic photometric errors due to seeing variations across the SDSS EDR (see right panel of Fig.6).

We have pushed the comparison further by combining the North and South strips, which we call EDR/(N+S) and analyze the EDR clustering as a whole. Combining samples in such a way is very risky because small systematic differences in the photometry tend to introduce large uncertainties in the overall mean surface density. This was overcome in the APM by a simultaneous match of many overlapping plates. For non-contiguous surveys the task is almost impossible, unless one has very well calibrated photometric observations, as is the case for the SDSS, to a level of 0.03 magnitudes (see Lupton etal 2001). The combined EDR/(N+S) sample shows very good agreement for the number counts (see Figure 1) and also with the APM $`w_2(\theta )`$, even at $`\theta >2`$ degrees. In this case the agreement is in fact within the corresponding sampling errors in the APM.

Higher order correlations show similar results. The mean SDSS skewness is in good agreement with the APM at all scales. The current SDSS sampling (1-sigma) errors range from $`10\%`$ at scales of arc-minutes (less than 1 Mpc/h) to about $`50\%`$ on degree scales ($`10`$ Mpc/h). At this level both surveys are in perfect agreement. The collapsed 3-point function, $`c_{12}`$ shows even smaller errors (this is because multi-point statistics are better sampled over narrow strips than counts in large smoothed cells). At degree scales (which correspond to the weakly non-linear regime $`r8`$ Mpc/h) we find $`c_{12}2.4\pm 0.6`$. This amplitude and also the shape is remarkably similar to that found in simulations and what is theoretically expected from gravitational instability $`c_{12}68/21+2/3\gamma `$ (see Bernardeau 1996, Gaztañaga, Fosalba & Croft 2001). The 3-point function for isosceles triangles of side $`\theta _{12}=\theta _{13}=0.5`$ deg. (left panel in Fig.10) seems lower than the APM values, but within the 2-sigma confidence level at any single point. Again here we would need of the covariance matrix to say more. In general, the North SDSS strip has higher amplitudes for the reduced skewness or 3-point function than the Southern strip.

We conclude that the SDSS is in good agreement with the previous galaxy surveys, and thus with the idea that gravitational growth from Gaussian initial conditions is most probably responsible for the hierarchical structures we see in the sky (Bernardeau etal 2002, and references therein).

The above agreement has encourage us to look into the detailed shape of $`w_2(\theta )`$ on intermediate scales, where the uncertainties are smaller and errors from the APM are more reliable. On scales of 0.1 to 1 degree, we find indications of slight ($`20\%`$) deviations from a simple power law (this is on larger scales than the power law deviations found in Connolly etal 2001). Right panel of Fig.8 shows that the different SDSS samples have very similar slopes to the APM survey, showing a characteristic inflection with a maximum slope. In hierarchical clustering models, the initial slope of $`d\mathrm{ln}\xi /d\mathrm{ln}r`$ is a smoothed decreasing function of the separation $`r`$. Projection effects can partially wash out this curve, but can not produce any inflection to the shape (at least if the selection function is also regular). In Gaztañaga & Juszkiewicz (2001 and references therein) it was argued and shown that weakly non-linear evolution produces a characteristic shape in $`d\mathrm{ln}\xi /d\mathrm{ln}r`$. This shape, smoothed by projections, is evident in the APM data for $`d\mathrm{ln}w(\theta )/d\mathrm{ln}\theta `$. Here we also find evidence for such a shape in the combined EDR/(N+S) SDSS data. The maximum in the slope occurs around $`\theta 0.6`$ deg, which corresponds to $`r5`$Mpc/h, as expected if biasing is small on those scales.

In summary, both the shape of the 2-point function and the shape and amplitude of the 3-point function and skewness in the SDSS EDR data, confirms the idea that galaxies are tracing the large scale matter distribution that started from Gaussian initial conditions (Bernardeau etal 2002, and references therein).

## Acknowledgments

I would like to thank R.Scranton and J.Frieman for useful discussions and comments on the first version of this paper. I acknowledge support by grants from IEEC/CSIC and DGI/MCT BFM2000-0810 and from coordinacion Astrofisica, INAOE. Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.