2003/05/12 by Neta A. Bahcall, Timothy A. McKay, J. Annis +23 · 5 citations
Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Cluster (spacecraft) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy cluster #Luminosity function #Physics #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #Redshift #Remote Sensing in Agriculture #Sky #Velocity dispersion #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/377167
published as Astrophys.J.Suppl.Ser.148:243-274,2003 · AASTeX, 62 pages, including 14 figures and 4 tables, submitted to ApJS. Paper with full-resolution figures at http://astro.princeton.edu/~feng/sdss_cluster.ps
arxiv created 2003/05/12 · openalex publication_date 2003/09/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a catalog of 799 clusters of galaxies in the redshift range z est = 0.05-0.3 selected from ∼400 deg 2 of early Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) commissioning data along the celestial equator. The catalog is based on merging two independent selection methods—a color-magnitude red-sequence maxBCG technique (B), and a hybrid matched filter method (H). The BH catalog includes clusters with richness Λ ≥ 40 (matched filter) and N gal ≥ 13 (maxBCG), corresponding to typical velocity dispersion of σ v ≳ 400 km s -1 and mass (within 0.6 h -1 Mpc radius) ≳5 × 10 13 h -1 M ⊙ . This threshold is below Abell richness class 0 clusters. The average space density of these clusters is 2 × 10 -5 h 3 Mpc -3 . All NORAS X-ray clusters and 53 of the 58 Abell clusters in the survey region are detected in the catalog; the five additional Abell clusters are detected below the BH catalog cuts. The cluster richness function is determined and found to exhibit a steeply decreasing cluster abundance with increasing richness. We derive observational scaling relations between cluster richness and observed cluster luminosity and cluster velocity dispersion; these scaling relations provide important physical calibrations for the clusters. The catalog can be used for studies of individual clusters, for comparisons with other sources such as X-ray clusters and active galactic nuclei, and, with proper correction for the relevant selection functions, also for statistical analyses of clusters.