A Study of 3000 Faint Galaxies

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Abstract
Positions, sizes, shapes and orientations of images of 3000 faint galaxies in an area of 2 deg2 near the south galactic pole have been measured on a photograph reaching B = 23 taken by the UK 48-in. Schmidt telescope in Australia. Measurements have been corrected for seeing effects. It is estimated that the galaxies observed are distributed to distances corresponding to redshifts of about 0·5. Comparison of the distribution of the apparently larger (nearer) galaxies with the smaller (more distant) ones shows that blank areas in the former are not repeated in the latter and consequently are not due to intergalactic obscuration. It is possible that there is a greater tendency to clustering among the more distant galaxies than among the nearer ones. Twenty per cent of distant galaxies appear to be in groups of four or more, but there are no major clusters containing tens of galaxies or more. There is a significant degree of alignment of the major axes of adjacent images showing that a substantial fraction ( > 12 per cent) of all galaxies are in dynamically related pairs. There is no significant difference between the frequency distributions of ellipticities of the nearer and more distant galaxies but only major differences (such as all or none of the distant ones being highly flattened) would have been detected. The number-diameter count shows: (a) A local excess of sources within ~ 150 Mpc. (b) A general agreement with conventional theoretical cosmological models. (c) A deviation from the theoretical models for small images.

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