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2. MULTIVARIATE DISTRIBUTIONS

To construct multivariate distributions requires an extensive wide area survey (> 10o), to reasonable depth (µlim > 25B mag arcsec-2), with reasonable resolution (FWHM = 1"), wavelength coverage (e.g., some of ubJ BVgrRiIc zJHK 3 etc) and spectroscopic redshifts/distances. The most notable catalogues for this purpose are: the two-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS; bj RF, 1800 sq deg, 250K z's; Colless et al. 2001), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; ugriz, 10000 sq deg, 1M z's; Stoughton et al. 2002), the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC; B+SDSS, 37 sq deg, 10K z's; Liske et al. 2003) and the two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS; JHK, all sky, SDSS+2dF+6dF+MGC z's, Jarrett et al. 2003). The MGC, although the smallest in area, is also the deepest (µlim = 26.0B mag arcsec-2), highest resolution (FWHM = 1.25") and most complete survey (see Liske et al. 2003; Cross et al. 2004; Driver et al. 2004). It also overlaps with the other three surveys and hence provides a "best of all worlds" hybrid dataset - for example 50 per cent of the ~ 10, 000 MGC redshifts derive from the 2dFGRS or SDSS, extensive optical colour coverage from SDSS, and partial near-IR coverage from 2MASS. The MGC 4 contains 10,061 resolved galaxies with 12.5 < BMGC < 20 mag with 95 per cent complete redshift coverage. All galaxies have been analysed with a variety of software packages including SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996), GIM2D (Simard et al. 2002) and eyeball classified to BMGC < 19 mag.



3 We specifically limit ourselves to the optical/IR regime but note the existence of all sky HI, X-ray and far-IR surveys. Back.

4 The MGC imaging and basic catalogues are available from http://www.eso.org/~jliske/mgc/ (additional catalogues including redshift, morphological and structural parameters are available on request from spd@mso.anu.edu.au). Back.

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