Star Formation in a Complete Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxies

Abstract

The 15R-North galaxy redshift survey is a uniform spectroscopic survey (S/N $\sim $10) covering the range 3650---7400\AA for 3149 galaxies with median redshift 0.05. The sample is 90% complete to $R=15.4$. The median slit covering fraction is 24% of the galaxy, apparently sufficient to minimize the effects of aperture bias on the EW(H$\alpha$). Forty-nine percent of the galaxes in the survey have one or more emission lines detected at $\geq 2 \sigma$. In agreement with previous surveys, the fraction of absorption-line galaxies increases steeply with galaxy luminosity. We use H$\beta$, O[III], H$\alpha$, and [N\II] to discriminate between star-forming galaxies and AGNs. We use the EW(H$\alpha$ + [N\II]) to estimate the Scalo birthrate parameter, $b$, the ratio of the current star formation rate to the time averaged star formation rate. Finally, we examine the way galaxies of different spectroscopic type trace the large-scale galaxy distribution.