paper

A Catalog of 200 Galaxy Clusters Serendipitously Detected in the ROSAT PSPC Pointed Observations

arXiv:astro-ph/9803099 · doi:10.1086/305951

Abstract

We present a catalog of 200 clusters of galaxies serendipitously detected in 647 ROSAT PSPC pointings covering 158 square degrees. This is one of the largest X-ray selected cluster samples, comparable in size only to the ROSAT All-Sky Survey sample of nearby clusters (Ebeling et al. 1997). We detect clusters in the inner 17.5 arcmin of the ROSAT PSPC field of view using the spatial extent of their X-ray emission. Cluster X-ray luminosities range from 10^42 erg/s to ~5x10^44 erg/s, i.e. from poor groups to rich clusters. The cluster redshifts range from z=0.015 to z>0.5. The catalog lists X-ray fluxes, core-radii, spectroscopic redshifts for 73 clusters and photometric redshifts for the remainder. We have optically confirmed 200 of 223 X-ray sources as clusters of galaxies. Of the remaining 23 sources, 18 are likely false detections arising from blends of unresolved point X-ray sources, and for 5 we have not obtained deep CCD images. Above a flux of 2e-13 erg/s/cm**2, 98\% of extended X-ray sources are optically confirmed clusters. The log N-log S relation derived from our catalog shows excellent agreement with previous results: EMSS and ROSAT All-Sky survey BCS in teh bright end and WARPS at intermediate fluxes. Our cluster counts appear to be systematically higher than those from a 50 deg^2 survey of Rosati et al. (1998). In particular, at a flux of 2e-13 erg/s/cm**2, we find a surface density of clusters of 0.57+/-0.07 per square degree, which is a factor of 1.3 more than found by Rosati et al. This difference is marginally significant at the ~2 sigma level. The large area of our survey makes it possible to study the evolution of the X-ray luminosity function in the high luminosity range inaccessible with other, smaller area ROSAT surveys.

To appear in Aug 1, 1998 issue of ApJ (vol 502)

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