The Definition, Visibility, and Significance of Redshift-Magnitude Bands

Abstract

Redshift- magnitude bands as they occur in the Coma cluster are formally defined and the original bands as observed in 1972 are shown to have a likelihood of random occurance of only 0.005 independent of their direction. The properties of the Coma bands are transformed to m_p magnitudes and used to show that an independent sample of outlying Coma galaxies shows strong band related characteristics. The proper- ties of the Coma bands are then used to predict band properties for the A2199 cluster. The resultant power spectrum test of a preliminary A2199 sample shows agreement which has a random likelihood of occurance of only 0.001. The A2199 cluster also shows a band related morphological separation as in Coma.