ar X iv : a st ro - p h / 94 06 04 9 v 1 1 6 Ju n 19 94 1 THE OPTICAL REDSHIFT SURVEY : SAMPLE SELECTION AND THE GALAXY DISTRIBUTION 1

This is the first in a series of papers describing the Optical Redshift Survey (ORS), a redshift survey of optically selected galaxies covering 98% of the sky above |b| = 20 (8.09 ster). The survey is drawn from the Uppsala Galaxy Catalogue (UGC), the European Southern Observatory Galaxy Catalogue (ESO), and the Extension to the Southern Galaxy Catalogue (ESGC), and contains two sub-catalogs, one complete to a B magnitude of 14.5, the other complete to a B major axis diameter of 1.9. The entire sample consists of 8457 objects, of which redshifts are now available for 8286; 171 objects remain without measured redshifts. Roughly 1300 of the redshifts were measured for the completion of the sample; the remainder were taken from the literature. Most of these new redshifts are concentrated at low Galactic latitudes 20 ≤ |b| ≤ 30 and within the strip not covered by either the UGC or ESO catalogues: −17.5 ≤ δ ≤ −2.5. The ORS provides the most detailed and homogeneous sampling of the large-scale galaxy distribution to date in these areas. The density field of bright optical galaxies is well-defined to 8000 km s, and is dominated by the Virgo, Hydra-Centaurus, Pisces-Perseus, Coma-A1367, and Telescopium-Pavo-Indus Superclusters. The dense sampling provided by ORS allows a detailed analysis of the galaxy density field, and will be used to test its dependence on morphology and other galaxy parameters. Subject headings: Cosmology: Large-Scale Structure of Universe—Cosmology: Observations— Galaxies: Distances and Redshifts