The Anisotropic Distribution of Satellite Galaxies

Understand

We identify satellites of isolated galaxies in SDSS and examine their angular distribution.

• Using mock catalogues generated from cosmological N-body simulations, we demonstrate that the selection criteria used to select isolated galaxies and their satellites must be very strict in order to correctly identify systems in which the primary galaxy dominates its environment.
• The criteria used in many previous studies instead select predominantly group members.
• We refine a set of selection criteria for which the group contamination is estimated to be less than 7% and present a catalogue of the resulting sample.