No Arabic abstract
We report the final redshift release of the 6dF Galaxy Survey, a combined redshift and peculiar velocity survey over the southern sky (|b|>10 deg). Its 136,304 spectra have yielded 110,256 new extragalactic redshifts and a new catalogue of 125,071 galaxies making near-complete samples with (K, H, J, r_F, b_J) <= (12.65, 12.95, 13.75, 15.60, 16.75). The median redshift of the survey is 0.053. Survey data, including images, spectra, photometry and redshifts, are available through an online database. We describe changes to the information in the database since earlier interim data releases. Future releases will include velocity dispersions, distances and peculiar velocities for the brightest early-type galaxies, comprising about 10% of the sample. Here we provide redshift maps of the southern local universe with z<=0.1, showing nearby large-scale structures in hitherto unseen detail. A number of regions known previously to have a paucity of galaxies are confirmed as significantly underdense regions. The URL of the 6dFGS database is http://www-wfau.roe.ac.uk/6dFGS
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) has obtained spectra for 245591 sources, mainly galaxies, brighter than a nominal extinction-corrected magnitude limit of b_J=19.45. Reliable redshifts were measured for 221414 galaxies. The galaxies are selected from the extended APM Galaxy Survey and cover an area of approximately 1500 square degrees in three regions: an NGP strip, an SGP strip and random fields scattered around the SGP strip. This paper describes the 2dFGRS final data release of 30 June 2003 and complements Colless et al. (2001), which described the survey and the initial 100k data release. The 2dFGRS database and full documentation are available on the WWW at http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/2dFGRS/
Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) at low redshift provide a precise and largely model-independent way to measure the Hubble constant, H0. The 6dF Galaxy Survey measurement of the BAO scale gives a value of H0 = 67 +/- 3.2 km/s/Mpc, achieving a 1-sigma precision of 5%. With improved analysis techniques, the planned WALLABY (HI) and TAIPAN (optical) redshift surveys are predicted to measure H0 to 1-3% precision.
The Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) has provided a uniform photometric catalog to search for previously unknown red AGN and QSOs. We have extended the search to the southern equatorial sky by obtaining spectra for 1182 AGN candidates using the 6dF multifibre spectrograph on the UK Schmidt Telescope. These were scheduled as auxiliary targets for the 6dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The candidates were selected using a single color cut of J - Ks > 2 to Ks ~ 15.5 and a galactic latitude of |b|>30 deg. 432 spectra were of sufficient quality to enable a reliable classification. 116 sources (or ~27%) were securely classified as type 1 AGN, 20 as probable type 1s, and 57 as probable type 2 AGN. Most of them span the redshift range 0.05<z<0.5 and only 8 (or ~6%) were previously identified as AGN or QSOs. Our selection leads to a significantly higher AGN identification rate amongst local galaxies (>20%) than in any previous galaxy survey. A small fraction of the type 1 AGN could have their optical colors reddened by optically thin dust with A_V<2 mag relative to optically selected QSOs. A handful show evidence for excess far-IR emission. The equivalent width (EW) and color distributions of the type 1 and 2 AGN are consistent with AGN unified models. In particular, the EW of the [OIII] emission line weakly correlates with optical--near-IR color in each class of AGN, suggesting anisotropic obscuration of the AGN continuum. Overall, the optical properties of the 2MASS red AGN are not dramatically different from those of optically-selected QSOs. Our near-IR selection appears to detect the most near-IR luminous QSOs in the local universe to z~0.6 and provides incentive to extend the search to deeper near-IR surveys.
The 6dF Galaxy Survey (6dFGS) aims to measure the redshifts of around 150,000 galaxies, and the peculiar velocities of a 15,000-member sub-sample, over almost the entire southern sky. When complete, it will be the largest redshift survey of the nearby universe, reaching out to about z ~ 0.15, and more than an order of magnitude larger than any peculiar velocity survey to date. The targets are all galaxies brighter than K_tot = 12.75 in the 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC), supplemented by 2MASS and SuperCOSMOS galaxies that complete the sample to limits of (H, J, r_F, b_J) = (13.05, 13.75, 15.6, 16.75). Central to the survey is the Six-Degree Field (6dF) multi-fibre spectrograph, an instrument able to record 150 simultaneous spectra over the 5.7-degree field of the UK Schmidt Telescope. An adaptive tiling algorithm has been employed to ensure around 95% fibering completeness over the 17046 sq.deg of the southern sky with | b | > 10 deg. Spectra are obtained in two observations using separate V and R gratings, that together give R ~ 1000 over at least 4000 -- 7500 Angstroms and signal-to-noise ratio ~10 per pixel. The 6dFGS database is available at http://www-wfau.roe.ac.uk/6dFGS/, with public data releases occuring after the completion of each third of the survey.