Spectroscopic Confirmation of Galaxy Clusters at z~0.92

  • Kim, Jae-Woo (Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Im, Myungshin (Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Lee, Seong-Kook (Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Hyun, Minhee (Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University)
  • Published : 2015.04.10

Abstract

Galaxy clusters have provided important information to understand the evolution of the universe, since the number density and mass of clusters are tightly related to the cosmological parameters. In addition, galaxy clusters are an excellent laboratory to investigate the galaxy evolution in dense environments. However, finding galaxy clusters at high redshift ($z{\geq}1$) still remains as a main subject in astronomy due to their rareness and difficulty in identifying such objects from optical imaging data alone. Here, we report a spectroscopic follow-up observation of distant galaxy cluster candidates identified by a deep optical-NIR dataset of Infrared Medium-deep Survey. Through the galaxy spectra taken with the IMACS instrument on the Magellan telescope, we confirm at least 3 massive clusters at z~0.92. Interestingly, the maximum spatial separation between these clusters is ~8Mpc, which implies that this system is a new supercluster in the distant universe. We also discuss properties of galaxies in these clusters based on multi-wavelength photometric data.

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