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M.J. Hudson (Waterloo), R.L. Davies, J.R. Lucey, S.A.W. Moore (Durham), J.E. Nelan (Dartmouth ), S.J. Quinney (Durham), D. Schade (CADC/HIA), R.J. Smith (U Catolica, Chile), N.B. Suntzeff (CTIO/NOAO), G.A. Wegner (Dartmouth )
The peculiar velocity field is the only probe of the mass distribution on large scales (>~ 10 h-1 Mpc) in the nearby Universe. In particular, the bulk flow of the local volume with respect to the CMB probes the very largest scales. Some recent bulk flow results are apparently in conflict, possibly due to the systematics arising from the wide range of instrumentation used by the different groups.
The NOAO Fundamental Plane Survey is an ongoing deep, homogeneous, all-sky spectroscopic and photometric study of 100 X-ray selected clusters within 200 h-1 Mpc. Using the Fundamental Plane distance indicator, we will make an independent determination of the large-scale flow of clusters of galaxies with respect to the CMB. With 4000 early-type galaxies (a factor of 5 increase over current FP surveys), we expect combined random and systematic errors to be <~ 120 km/s for each component of the bulk flow vector. The resulting photometric and spectroscopic database will be a unique and valuable resource to the community for studies of galaxy morphology, stellar populations and galaxy evolution in the cluster environment.
This project is supported by NOAO through their survey program. Here we present preliminary results from early survey data.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://astro.uwaterloo.ca/~mjhudson/research/flows/nfp. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: mjhudson@uwaterloo.ca