SUPERCLUSTERS AND PENCIL-BEAM SURVEYS - THE ORIGIN OF LARGE-SCALE PERIODICITY

It is shown that the apparent approximately 130 h-1 Mpc periodic distribution of galaxies recently observed in narrow pencil-beam surveys originates in known large-scale superclusters. The superclusters, covering the high-latitude sky to z less-than-or-equal-to 0.08, show the same peaks that appear in the narrow-beam survey. These results suggest a network structure of large (approximately 100 h-1 Mpc) supercluster surfaces (walls) surrounding low-density regions. The apparent periodicity is expected to diminish when averaged over different directions.