The 6dF Galaxy Survey: Mass and Motions in the Local Universe

The 6dF Galaxy Survey will provide 167000 redshifts and about 15000 peculiar velocities for galaxies over most of the southern sky out to about cz = 30000 km/s. The survey is currently almost half complete, with the final observations due in mid-2005. An initial data release was made public in December 2002; the first third of the dataset will be released at the end of 2003, with the remaining thirds being released at the end of 2004 and 2005. The status of the survey, the survey database and other relevant information can be obtained from the 6dFGS web site at http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/6dFGS.

In terms of constraining cosmological parameters, combining the 6dFGS redshift and peculiar velocity surveys will allow us to: (1) break the degeneracy between the redshift-space distortion parameter beta = Omega_m^0.6b/b and the galaxy-mass correlation parameter r_g; (2) measure the four parameters A_g, Gamma, beta and r_g with precisions of between 1% and 3%; (3) measure the variation of r_g and b with scale to within a few percent over a wide range of scales.