Statistical properties of the LEDA redshift database

Abstract

We present the statistical properties of large scale galaxy distribution in the LEDA redshift database. This catalog contains more than 40,000 redshifts over all the sky. We find that LEDA, although seriously affected by incompleteness, shows quite stable statistical properties. In particular, we have considered the behaviour of the two points correlation function and of the power spectrum of the density fluctuations, and we have done several tests to check whether the incompleteness of the catalog affect these statistical quantities. Our conclusion is that galaxy distribution in this catalog has fractal properties up to the distance 200 Mpc with D = 2.1 \pm 0.2, with no sign towards homogeneity: this result is statistically stable. We analyze also the properties of the angular distributions, finding a complete agreement with the results obtained in redshift space. Finally, we compare these results with those obtained in other redshift surveys, finding that this sample well reproduces the properties of galaxy distribution found in the different catalogs.