Fractal correlations in the CfA2-South Redshift Survey

We report our analysis of the properties of galaxy clustering for a new red shift sample of galaxies, the CfA2-South catalog, using statistical methods that do not rely on the assumption of homogeneity. We find that, up to sim ilar to 20 h(-1) Mpc, which is the largest scale to which correlation prope rties can be reliably inferred, the galaxy clustering is scale invariant an d characterized by a fractal dimension D = 1.9 +/- 0.1. Further, there is n o statistical evidence for homogeneity at any of the larger scales (up to s imilar to 150 h(-1) Mpc) probed more weakly by the catalog. These results m ean that characteristic "correlation lengths" for the clustering of galaxie s derived using standard methods of analysis an not meaningful. Further: th e results are very consistent with those obtained from many other catalogs using the methods adopted here, which show the D approximate to 2 fractal c ontinuing to beyond 100 h(-1) Mpc. The incompleteness of the relevant data conjectured by various authors to give rise to such behavior is therefore p roved to have no significant effect (up to 20 h(-1) Mpc) on the measured co rrelations.