New supercluster discovered by astronomers

New supercluster discovered by astronomers

Color image of the galaxy’s density map at redshift of 0.36 from eROSITA’s Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). White circles indicate the location of the eight galaxies that make up the new supercluster. Credit: Ghirardini et al., 2020.

Analyzing the data from the eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS), an international team of astronomers has identified a new supercluster. The newly found structure consists of eight galaxies. The discovery is reported in an article published on the arXiv preprint server on December 21st.

With diverse structures with a variety of masses, from massive and dense galaxies to bridges, filaments and low density dust sheets, superclusters are one of the largest structures in the known universe. Finding and investigating superslusters in detail may be essential to improve our understanding of the formation and evolution of large cosmic filaments.

Now a group of astronomers led by Vittorio Ghirardini of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, are reporting the discovery of a new supercluster. The structure was identified by the eFEDS survey during the performance verification (PV) phase.

“We analyze the 140 degrees2 field eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth (eFEDS), observed during the Performance Verification Phase to a nominal depth of approximately 2.3 ks. In this field we detect a previously unknown supercluster, ‘the astronomers wrote in the newspaper.

The supercluster consists of a chain of eight galaxies with a red shift of 0.36. The observations show that the northernmost groups of this structure undergo a large fusion activity. Optical and X-ray data indicate that it is a triple fusion system with a double fusion and a pre-fusion.

The cluster indicated as eFEDS J093513.3 + 004746, which lives in the northern part of the supercluster, is the most massive and brightest one of the eight. It is also one of the most massive and brightest clusters in the entire eFEDS field. Its mass is calculated at 580 trillion solar masses.

The smallest masses of this supercluster, eFEDS J093546.4-000115 and eFEDS J093543.9-000334, have masses of about 130 trillion solar masses. The mass of the remaining five clusters is estimated at between 140 and 250 trillion solar masses.

Furthermore, the data revealed that there are two radio remnants in the northern and southeastern region of the northernmost groups, and an elongated radiohalo, which also supports the ongoing scenario for merger activities.

“The presence of an elongated radio beam connecting two radio remnants in eFEDS J093513.3 + 004746 and eFEDS J093510.7 + 004910 indicates that the group is undergoing a major merger. This is supported by the galaxy’s contour map which has two peaks show the northern and southern regions of the cluster system, ”the astronomers explained.

Overall, the study reports that the X-ray characteristics of the eight clusters that make up the new supercluster are similar to those of the common eFEDS population. In addition, its morphological characteristics correspond to the sample of more than 300 groups identified by eFEDS.


Radio relics discovered in a nearby galaxy group


More information:
Discovery of a supercluster in the eROSITA survey of the final equatorial depth: X-ray properties, Radio Halo and double remains, arXiv: 2012.11607 [astro-ph.CO] arxiv.org/abs/2012.11607

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Quotation: New supercluster discovered by astronomers (2020, December 29) detected on December 29, 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-supercluster-astronomers.html

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