Southern Cosmology Survey I: Optical Cluster Detections and Predictions for the Southern Common-Area Millimeter-Wave Experiments

Abstract

We present first results from the Southern Cosmology Survey, a new multiwavelength survey of the southern sky coordinated with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), a recently commissioned ground-based mm-band Cosmic Microwave Background experiment. This article presents a full analysis of archival optical multi-band imaging data covering an 8 square degree region near right ascension 23 hours and declination -55 degrees, obtained by the Blanco 4-m telescope and Mosaic-II camera in late 2005. We describe the pipeline we have developed to process this large data volume, obtain accurate photometric redshifts, and detect optical clusters. Our cluster finding process uses the combination of a matched spatial filter, photometric redshift probability distributions and richness estimation. We present photometric redshifts, richness estimates, luminosities, and masses for 8 new optically-selected clusters with mass greater than $3\times10^{14}M_{\sun}$ at redshifts out to 0.7. We also present estimates for the expected Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) signal from these clusters as specific predictions for upcoming observations by ACT, the South Pole Telescope and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment.

12 pages, 8 figures, accepted in ApJ. Reflects changes from referee as well as a new Table providing mass estimates and positions for all clusters in the survey

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• The Blanco Cosmology Survey: Data Acquisition, Processing, Calibration, Quality Diagnostics and Data Release
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: ACT-CL J0102-4915 "El Gordo," a Massive Merging Cluster at Redshift 0.87
• X-ray Properties of the First SZE-selected Galaxy Cluster Sample from the South Pole Telescope
• Weak lensing analysis of SZ-selected clusters of galaxies from the SPT and Planck surveys
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Physical Properties and Purity of a Galaxy Cluster Sample Selected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
• Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project: II. Quantifying scatter and bias using contrasting mock catalogues
• Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project: I. Methods and first results on galaxy-based techniques
• Optical Redshift and Richness Estimates for Galaxy Clusters Selected with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect from 2008 South Pole Telescope Observations
• The Blanco Cosmology Survey: An Optically-Selected Galaxy Cluster Catalog and a Public Release of Optical Data Products
• 3D-Matched-Filter Galaxy Cluster Finder I: Selection Functions and CFHTLS Deep Clusters
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Physical Properties of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Clusters on the Celestial Equator
• Optimal filtering of optical and weak lensing data to search for galaxy clusters: application to the COSMOS field
• The XXL Survey: VI. The 1000 brightest X-ray point sources
• The XXL Survey: XXVII. The 3XLSS point source catalogue
• Southern Cosmology Survey II: Massive Optically-Selected Clusters from 70 square degrees of the SZE Common Survey Area
• First lensing measurements of SZ-discovered clusters
• AzTEC 1.1 mm observations of high-z protocluster environments: SMG overdensities and misalignment between AGN jets and SMG distribution
• Bayesian Cluster Finder: Clusters in the CFHTLS Archive Research Survey
• A Multiband Study of the Galaxy Populations of the First Four Sunyaev--Zeldovich Effect selected Galaxy Clusters
• Observation and Confirmation of Six Strong Lensing Systems in The Dark Energy Survey Science Verification Data
• Optical Galaxy Clusters in the Deep Lens Survey
• The LABOCA/ACT Survey of Clusters at All Redshifts: multi-wavelength analysis of background submillimeter galaxies
• The XMM-BCS galaxy cluster survey: I. The X-ray selected cluster catalog from the initial 6 deg${}^2$