Michael A. Strauss

We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum $P(k)$ from over 200 000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in combination with Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and other data. Our results are consistent with a ``vanilla'' flat adiabatic cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant without tilt ${(n}_{s}=1),$ running tilt, tensor modes, or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening $1\ensuremath{\sigma}$ constraints on the Hubble parameter from $h\ensuremath{\approx}{0.74}_{\ensuremath{-}0.07}^{+0.18}$ to $h\ensuremath{\approx}{0.70}_{\ensuremath{-}0.03}^{+0.04},$ on the matter density from ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{m}\ensuremath{\approx}0.25\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.10$ to ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{m}\ensuremath{\approx}0.30\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.04$ $(1\ensuremath{\sigma})$ and on neutrino masses from $<11$ to $<0.6\mathrm{eV}$ (95%). SDSS helps even more when dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint analysis of WMAP and the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the measured age of the Universe tightens from ${t}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}{16.3}_{\ensuremath{-}1.8}^{+2.3}\mathrm{Gyr}$ to ${t}_{0}\ensuremath{\approx}{14.1}_{\ensuremath{-}0.9}^{+1.0}\mathrm{Gyr}$ by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.

We present cosmological results from the final galaxy clustering data set of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our combined galaxy sample comprises 1.2 million massive galaxies over an effective area of 9329 deg 2 and volume of 18.7 Gpc 3 , divided into three partially overlapping redshift slices centred at effective redshifts 0.38, 0.51 and 0.61. We measure the angular diameter distance D M and Hubble parameter H from the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) method, in combination with a cosmic microwave background prior on the sound horizon scale, after applying reconstruction to reduce non-linear effects on the BAO feature. Using the anisotropic clustering of the

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is an imaging and spectroscopic survey that will eventually cover approximately one-quarter of the celestial sphere and collect spectra of ~106 galaxies, 100,000 quasars, 30,000 stars, and 30,000 serendipity targets. In 2001 June, the SDSS released to the general astronomical community its early data release, roughly 462 deg2 of imaging data including almost 14 million detected objects and 54,008 follow-up spectra. The imaging data were collected in drift-scan mode in five bandpasses (u, g, r, i, and z); our 95% completeness limits for stars are 22.0, 22.2, 22.2, 21.3, and 20.5, respectively. The photometric calibration is reproducible to 5%, 3%, 3%, 3%, and 5%, respectively. The spectra are flux- and wavelength-calibrated, with 4096 pixels from 3800 to 9200 A at R~1800. We present the means by which these data are distributed to the astronomical community, descriptions of the hardware used to obtain the data, the software used for processing the data, the measured quantities for each observed object, and an overview of the properties of this data set.

We describe the algorithm that selects the main sample of galaxies for spectroscopy in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from the photometric data obtained by the imaging survey. Galaxy photometric properties are measured using the Petrosian magnitude system, which measures flux in apertures determined by the shape of the surface brightness profile. The metric aperture used is essentially independent of cosmological surface brightness dimming, foreground extinction, sky brightness, and the galaxy central surface brightness. The main galaxy sample consists of galaxies with r-band Petrosian magnitude r < 17.77 and r-band Petrosian half-light surface brightness < 24.5 magnitudes per square arcsec. These cuts select about 90 galaxy targets per square degree, with a median redshift of 0.104. We carry out a number of tests to show that (a) our star-galaxy separation criterion is effective at eliminating nearly all stellar contamination while removing almost no genuine galaxies, (b) the fraction of galaxies eliminated by our surface brightness cut is very small (0.1%), (c) the completeness of the sample is high, exceeding 99%, and (d) the reproducibility of target selection based on repeated imaging scans is consistent with the expected random photometric errors. (abridged)

Americanae nace como un proyecto conjunto que surge dentro de la Red Europea de Información y Documentación sobre América Latina (REDIAL), y que ha afrontado la Biblioteca de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). Esta nueva biblioteca virtual hace más accesibles los libros digitales de tema americanista a los investigadores y usuarios interesados de cualquier parte del mundo.