[Previous] | [Session 6] | [Next]
M.M. Donegan (Dartmouth College)
The galaxy clusters Abell 999 and Abell 1016 occupy the same region of redshift space (cz ~ 10,000 km/s) and are at a projected distance of approximately 3.4 Mpc. Fundamental Plane (FP) distance estimates are used to constrain the kinematics of the clusters and estimate their total binding mass. Deep R band CCD photometry and spectroscopy are utilized to determine the FP parameters Re, sigma, and Ie for 36 cluster members. The radial infall model of Beers et al. (1982) is then applied to yield a total mass estimate for the cluster pair, found independently of the virial mass. All observations for this project were conducted at the 1.3m and 2.4m telescopes at MDM Observatory on Kitt Peak, AZ.