Astron. Astrophys. 321, 10-18 (1997)

Influence of a partial incompleteness of the sample on the determination of the Hubble constant

O. Witasse ^{1, 2} and G. Paturel <sup>1

1</sup> LEDA Extragalactic Database, Observatoire de Lyon, F-69561 Saint-Genis-Laval Cedex, France
² Université Paris-sud, F-91450 Orsay Cedex, France

Received 2 January 1996 / Accepted 1 October 1996

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the Malmquist bias effect in the determination of the Hubble constant from the method of "sosies" (look-alike) galaxies. It is shown that a bias appears when a partial incompleteness exists in the sample. A new method, based on the use of the completeness curve, is proposed to correct for such a bias. After this correction, the Hubble constant drops of about 20% just because of the existence of the partial incompleteness. From the present results and on the acceptance of the distance modulus of primary calibrators, the value of the Hubble constant would be: with an internal statistical error of about .

Key words: distance scale methods: data analysis galaxies: general

Send offprint requests to: G. Paturel

SIMBAD Objects

Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The sample
  • 2.1. Study of the completeness of the sample
  • 2.2. Selection of Sosies galaxies
• 3. Malmquist bias: treatment in an idealized case
• 4. Study of the partial incompleteness
• 5. Discussion and conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• Appendix A
• Appendix A
• References

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1997

Online publication: June 30, 1998
helpdesk.link@springer.de