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T. A. McKay, B. Koester (University of Michigan), R. Wechsler (Kavli Center for Cosmological Physics), J. Annis (Fermilab), A. Evrard (University of Michigan), E. Sheldon (Kavli Center for Cosmological Physics), D. Johnston (Princeton University), S. Hansen (University of Chicago), R. Scranton (University of Pittsburgh), SDSS Collaboration
Massive clusters of galaxies display various color, spatial, and morphological regularities in their galaxy populations that enable their detection. The presence of an E/S0 ridgeline can be used to identify clusters in sufficiently accurate multicolor optical imaging data. Since the color of this ridgeline is strongly dependent on redshift, cluster identification using this method provides accurate photometric redshifts and is largely insensitive to projection effects.
We present a large catalog of galaxy groups and clusters extracted in this way from more than 5000 square degrees of DR3 imaging data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The catalog includes more than 80,000 objects with at least ten galaxies brighter than 0.4 L*, spanning a redshift range from z=0.05 to 0.30. We describe some details of the cluster detection method, and present results on tests of sample completeness, purity, photometric redshift accuracy, and mass scalings.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #2
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.