Multi-Scale Morphological Analysis of SDSS DR5 Survey using the Metric Space Technique

TL;DR

This paper applies a multi-scale morphological analysis using the Metric Space Technique to SDSS DR5 galaxy data, comparing observations with simulations to quantify structural similarities across scales from 5 to 250 Mpc.

Contribution

It introduces an adaptation of the Metric Space Technique for multi-scale analysis of galaxy distributions, enabling quantitative comparison between observations and simulations.

Findings

Quantitative structural information across multiple scales.

Observed galaxy distributions compared with simulations.

Method to quantify similarity between observed and simulated data.

Abstract

Following novel development and adaptation of the Metric Space Technique (MST), a multi-scale morphological analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5) was performed. The technique was adapted to perform a space-scale morphological analysis by filtering the galaxy point distributions with a smoothing Gaussian function, thus giving quantitative structural information on all size scales between 5 and 250 Mpc. The analysis was performed on a dozen slices of a volume of space containing many newly measured galaxies from the SDSS DR5 survey. Using the MST, observational data were compared to galaxy samples taken from N-body simulations with current best estimates of cosmological parameters and from random catalogs. By using the maximal ranking method among MST output functions we also develop a way to quantify the overall similarity of the observed samples with the simulated samples.