The angular power spectra of photometric Sloan Digital Sky Survey luminous red galaxies

We construct new galaxy angular power spectra C-l based on the extended, updated and final Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) II luminous red galaxy (LRG) photometric redshift survey - MegaZ (DR7). Encapsulating 7746 deg2 we utilize 723 556 photometrically determined LRGs between 0.45 < z < 0.65 in a 3.3 (Gpc h-1)3 spherical harmonic analysis of the galaxy distribution. By combining four photometric redshift bins, we find preliminary parameter constraints of f(b) equivalent to (b)/(m) = 0.173 +/- 0.046 and (m) = 0.260 +/- 0.035 assuming H-0 = 75 km s-1 Mpc-1, n(s) = 1 and (k) = 0. These limits are consistent with the cosmic microwave background and the previous data release (DR4). The C-l are sensitive to redshift space distortions and therefore we also recast our constraints into a measurement of beta approximate to 0.55(m)/b in different redshift shells. The robustness of these power spectra with respect to a number of potential systematics such as extinction, photometric redshift and ANNz training set extrapolation are examined. The latter includes a cosmological comparison of available photometric redshift estimation codes where we find excellent agreement between template and empirical estimation methods. MegaZ DR7 represents a methodological prototype to next generation surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey and, furthermore, is a photometric precursor to the spectroscopic BOSS survey. Our galaxy catalogue and all power spectra data can be found at http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/similar to sat/MegaZ/MegaZDR7.tar.gz.