XI Encontro Nacional de Astronomia e Astrofísica


First steps on the road to XCS

Pedro Viana
Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Rua das Estrelas, 4150 Porto

Resumo

We will start by brie y describing a serendipitous galaxy cluster survey, named XCS, that we plan to conduct with the XMM-Newton X-ray satellite. We estimate that, over the 10 year design lifetime of XMM-Newton, our survey will cover about 800 square degrees of sky, yielding a catalogue with thousands of galaxy clusters. The precise number will sensitively depend on the value of  Wo, meaning that this quantity will be strongly constrained through the XCS. However, for the full potential of the XCS to be exploited, it will be necessary to optically measure redshifts for a substantial fraction of the clusters in it. We will show how the selection procedure to decide which detected clusters will have their redshifts measured first can be optimised to yield strong constraints on Wo from the start of the XCS, by combining apparent X-ray temperatures with other X-ray information.


Grupo de Astronomia da Universidade da Madeira - 2001