Towards discovery of gravitationally lensed explosive transients: the brightest galaxies in massive galaxy clusters from Planck-SZ2 [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2304.06624


We combine the Planck-SZ2 galaxy cluster catalogue with near-infrared photometry of galaxies from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey to identify candidate brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in 306 massive clusters in the Southern skies at redshifts of $z>0.1$. We find that 91% of these clusters have at least one candidate BCG within the 95% confidence interval on the cluster centers quoted by the Planck collaboration, providing reassurance that our analyses are statistically compatible, and find 92% to be reasonable candidates following a manual inspection. We make our catalog publicly available to assist colleagues interested in multi-wavelength studies of cluster cores, and the search for gravitationally lensed explosive transients in upcoming surveys including the Legacy Survey of Space and Time by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

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J. Smith, D. Ryczanowski, M. Bianconi, et. al.
Fri, 14 Apr 23
61/64

Comments: Published in RNAAS in March 2023. 3 pages, 1 figure