TITLE: 

Towards More Precise Photometric Redshifts: Calibration Via CCD
Photometry

AUTHORS: 

Robert J. Brunner, Andrew J. Connolly, Alexander S. Szalay, and
Matthew A. Bershady

PUBLISHED: to appear in ApJ Letters

ABSTRACT:

We present the initial results from a deep, multi-band photometric
survey of selected high Galactic latitude redshift fields. Previous
work using the photographic data of Koo and Kron demonstrated that the
distribution of galaxies in the multi-dimensional flux space U B R I
is nearly planar. The position of a galaxy within this plane is
determined by its redshift, luminosity and spectral type. Using
recently acquired deep CCD photometry in existing, published redshift
fields, we have redetermined the distribution of galaxies in this
four-dimensional magnitude space. Furthermore, from our CCD photometry
and the published redshifts, we have quantified the
photometric-redshift relation within the standard AB magnitude
system. This empirical relation has a measured dispersion of
approximately 0.02 for z < 0.4.  With this work we are reaching the
asymptotic intrinsic dispersions that were predicted from simulated
distributions of galaxy colors.