The Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey II: Initial Spectroscopic Confirmation of z ~ 1 Galaxy Clusters Selected from 10,000 Square Degrees

Abstract

We present optical and infrared imaging and optical spectroscopy of galaxy clusters which were identified as part of an all-sky search for high-redshift galaxy clusters, the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS). The initial phase of MaDCoWS combined infrared data from the all-sky data release of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) with optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to select probable z ~ 1 clusters of galaxies over an area of 10,000 deg^2. Our spectroscopy confirms 19 new clusters at 0.7 < z < 1.3, half of which are at z > 1, demonstrating the viability of using WISE to identify high-redshift galaxy clusters. The next phase of MaDCoWS will use the greater depth of the AllWISE data release to identify even higher redshift cluster candidates.

Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement; 21 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables

References in corpus (1)

• The Angular Clustering of Distant Galaxy Clusters

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