The Sloan Digital Sky Survey ( SDSS ) surveyed 14,555 square degrees , and delivered over a trillion pixels of imaging data .
We present a study of galaxy clustering using 900,000 luminous galaxies with photometric redshifts , spanning between z = 0.45 and z = 0.65 , constructed from the SDSS using methods described in Ross et al .
( 2011 ) .
This data-set spans 11,000 square degrees and probes a volume of 3 h ^ { -3 } Gpc ^ { 3 } , making it the largest volume ever used for galaxy clustering measurements .
We describe in detail the construction of the survey window function and various systematics affecting our measurement .
With such a large volume , high precision cosmological constraints can be obtained given a careful control and understanding of the observational systematics .
We present a novel treatment of the observational systematics and its applications to the clustering signals from the data set .
In this paper , we measure the angular clustering using an optimal quadratic estimator at 4 redshift slices with an accuracy of \sim 15 \% with bin size of \delta _ { l } = 10 on scales of the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations ( BAO ) ( at \ell \sim 40 - 400 ) .
We also apply corrections to the power-spectra due to systematics , and derive cosmological constraints using the full-shape of the power-spectra .
For a flat \Lambda CDM model , when combined with Cosmic Microwave Background Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 7 ( WMAP7 ) and H _ { 0 } constraints from using 600 Cepheids observed by Wide Feild Camera 3 ( WFC3 ) ( HST ) , we find \Omega _ { \Lambda } = 0.73 \pm 0.019 and H _ { 0 } to be 70.5 \pm 1.6 s ^ { -1 } Mpc ^ { -1 } km .
For an open \Lambda CDM model , when combined with WMAP7 + HST , we find \Omega _ { K } = 0.0035 \pm 0.0054 , improved over WMAP7+HST alone by 40 \% .
For a wCDM model , when combined with WMAP7+HST+SN , we find w = -1.071 \pm 0.078 , and H _ { 0 } to be 71.3 \pm 1.7 s ^ { -1 } Mpc ^ { -1 } km , which is competitive with the latest large scale structure constraints from large spectroscopic surveys such as SDSS Data Release 7 ( DR7 ) ( Reid et al .
2010 , Percival et al .
2010 , Montesano et al .
2011 ) and WiggleZ ( Blake et al .
2011 ) .
We also find that systematic-corrected power-spectra gives consistent constraints on cosmological models when compared with pre-systematic correction power-spectra in the angular scales of interest .
The SDSS-III Data Release 8 ( SDSS-III DR8 ) Angular Clustering Data allows a wide range of investigations into the cosmological model , cosmic expansion ( via BAO ) , Gaussianity of initial conditions and neutrino masses .
Here , we refer to our companion papers ( Seo et al .
2011 , de Putter et al .
2011 ) for further investigations using the clustering data .
Our calculation of survey selection function , systematics maps , likelihood function for COSMOMC package will be released at http : //portal.nersc.gov/project/boss/galaxy/photoz/ .