A catalog of compact groups of galaxies in the SDSS commissioning data

Compact groups (CGs) of galaxies - relatively poor groups of galaxies in which the typical separations between members is of the order of a galaxy diameter - offer an exceptional laboratory for the study of dense galactic environments with short (< 1 Gyr) dynamical timescales. We present an objectively defined catalog of CGs in 153 deg(2) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Early Data Release. To identify CGs, we applied a modified version of Hickson's criteria of 1982 aimed at finding the highest-density CGs and thus reducing the number of chance alignments. Our catalog contains 175 CGs down to a limiting galaxy magnitude of r* = 21. The resulting catalog has a median depth of z(med) ≈ 0.13, substantially deeper than previous CG catalogs. Since the SDSS will eventually image up to one-quarter of the celestial sphere, we expect our final catalog, based on the completed SDSS, will contain on the order of 5000 - 10,000 CGs. This catalog will be useful for conducting studies of the general characteristics of CGs, their environments, and their component galaxies.