We describe the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey ( 2dFGRS ) , and the current status of the observations .
In this exploratory paper , we apply a Principal Component Analysis to a preliminary sample of 5869 galaxy spectra and use the two most significant components to split the sample into five spectral classes .
These classes are defined by considering visual classifications of a subset of the 2dF spectra , and also by comparing to high quality spectra of local galaxies .
We calculate a luminosity function for each of the different classes and find that later-type galaxies have a fainter characteristic magnitude , and a steeper faint-end slope .
For the whole sample we find M ^ { \star } = -19.7 ( for \Omega =1 , H _ { 0 } =100 km s ^ { -1 } Mpc ^ { -1 } ) , \alpha = -1.3 , \phi ^ { \star } = 0.017 .
For class 1 ( ‘ early-type ’ ) we find M ^ { \star } = -19.6 , \alpha = -0.7 , while for class 5 ( ‘ late-type ’ ) we find M ^ { \star } = -19.0 , \alpha = -1.7 .
The derived 2dF luminosity functions agree well with other recent luminosity function estimates .