Values of the observationally accessible proxy for orientation–direction alignment, ϵ_g+ (see equation 9), as a function of the projected separation, r_p, form simulations considering all stars bound to the subhalo (green curves) and only stars within |$r_{\rm half}^{\rm star}$| (magenta curve). The data points are the observational results from Singh et al. (2015) for the LOWZ sample of LRG galaxies (their fig. 19, note that in their work ϵ_g+ is denoted 〈γ〉 for its direct connection with the shear). We consider pairs of galaxies that have a separation along the projected axis smaller than 100 h⁻¹ Mpc. The error bars on the curves indicate 1σ bootstrap errors. When we consider all the stars, the predicted alignment is stronger than observed. However, when we only use stars in the part of the galaxy that might typically be observed, we find good agreement with the data.