A serendipitous survey for galaxy clusters by the XMM-Newton Survey Science Center

Abstract

We describe the initial results of a programme to detect and identify extended X-ray sources found serendipitously in XMM-Newton observations. We have analysed 186 EPIC-PN images at high galactic latitude with a limiting flux of $1\times 10^{-14}$ \ergcms and found 62 cluster candidates. Thanks to the enhanced sensitivity of the XMM-Newton telescopes, the new clusters found in this pilot study are on the average fainter, more compact, and more distant than those found in previous X-ray surveys. At our survey limit the surface density of clusters is about 5 deg${}^{-2}$. We also present the first results of an optical follow-up programme aiming at the redshift measurement of a large sample of clusters. The results of this pilot study give a first glimpse on the potential of serendipitous cluster science with XMM-Newton based on real data. The largest, yet to be fulfilled promise is the identification of a large number of high-redshift clusters for cosmological studies up to $z=1$ or 1.5.

arXiv commentProc World Space Conf. Houston, October 2002, Adv. Space Res., in press

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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Discovery of an X-ray-Luminous Galaxy Cluster at z=1.4
• The XMM Cluster Survey: X-ray analysis methodology
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• Stability of Cool Cores During Galaxy Cluster Growth: A Joint $Chandra$/SPT Analysis of 67 Galaxy Clusters Along a Common Evolutionary Track Spanning 9 Gyr
• Morphologies in a Cluster of Extremely Red Galaxies with Old Stellar Populations at z=1.34
• Distant galaxy clusters in a deep XMM-Newton field within the CFTHLS D4
• Detection of X-ray galaxy clusters based on the Kolmogorov method