SDSS redshifts in the Coma cluster

This was followed by the first spectroscopic commissioning run during the dark period of 1999 June. We present here the first hour of extragalactic spectroscopy taken during these early commissioning stages: an observation of the Coma cluster of galaxies.

Our data samples the southern part of this cluster, out to a radius of 15{deg} (1.8h^-1^Mpc, approximately to the virial radius) and thus fully covers the NGC 4839 group. We provide redshifts and spectral classifications for 196 Coma galaxies, of which 45 redshifts are new. For the 151 galaxies in common with the literature, we find excellent agreement between our redshift determinations and the published values, e.g., for the largest homogeneous sample of galaxies in common (63 galaxies observed by Colless & Dunn, 1996ApJ...458..435C) we find a mean offset of 3km/s and an rms scatter of only 24km/s.