A GMBCG Galaxy Cluster Catalog of 55,424 Rich Clusters from SDSS DR7
Abstract
We present a large catalog of optically selected galaxy clusters from the application of a new Gaussian Mixture Brightest Cluster Galaxy (GMBCG) algorithm to SDSS Data Release 7 data. The algorithm detects clusters by identifying the red sequence plus Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) feature, which is unique for galaxy clusters and does not exist among field galaxies. Red sequence clustering in color space is detected using an Error Corrected Gaussian Mixture Model. We run GMBCG on 8240 square degrees of photometric data from SDSS DR7 to assemble the largest ever optical galaxy cluster catalog, consisting of over 55,000 rich clusters across the redshift range from 0.1 < z < 0.55. We present Monte Carlo tests of completeness and purity and perform cross-matching with X-ray clusters and with the maxBCG sample at low redshift. These tests indicate high completeness and purity across the full redshift range for clusters with 15 or more members.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1010.5503,
title = {A GMBCG Galaxy Cluster Catalog of 55,424 Rich Clusters from SDSS DR7},
author = {Jiangang Hao and Timothy A. McKay and Benjamin P. Koester and Eli S. Rykoff and Eduardo Rozo and James Annis and Risa H. Wechsler and August Evrard and Seth R. Siegel and Matthew Becker and Michael Busha and David Gerdes and David E. Johnston and Erin Sheldon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.5503},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
Updated to match the published version. The catalog can be accessed from: http://home.fnal.gov/~jghao/gmbcg_sdss_catalog.html