A study of the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the South Galactic Pole region - II. Further evidence for a preferential clustering scale?

We analyse a set of new pencil-beam galaxy redshift data in three small regions around the South Galactic Pole area. We investigate whether we can find any evidence of the quasi-periodic peaks discovered by Broadhurst et al. in the distribution of galaxies along the North Galactic Pole-South Galactic Pole directions. We use both a power spectrum analysis and a cross-correlation with a sliding comb-like window (the comb-template technique). Despite the data being less deep (similar to 600 h(-1) Mpc) and certainly not optimal for such an investigation, there is evidence of the same preferential similar to 130 h(-1) Mpc scale in two fields displaced respectively 15 degrees and 30 degrees west of the Broadhurst et al. original probe. Taken alone, however, this scale would not be statistically distinguishable from a noise fluctuation. Nevertheless, the statistical significance rises to similar to 99 per cent when one refers to the conditional probability of finding apeak around the same scale measured by Broadhurst et al.