  The radial component of the peculiar velocities of galaxies cause
displacements in their positions in redshift space. We study the effect of the
peculiar velocities on the linear redshift space two point correlation
function. Our analysis takes into account the radial nature of the redshift
space distortions and it highlights the limitations of the plane parallel
approximation. We consider the problem of determining the value of \beta and
the real space two point correlation function from the linear redshift space
two point correlation function. The inversion method proposed here takes into
account the radial nature of the redshift space distortions and can be applied
to magnitude limited redshift surveys that have only partial sky coverage.
