Argonne-Led Team Releases Landmark Catalog of More Than 7,000 Galaxy Clusters From South Pole Telescope
New cosmic census based on five years of data opens a powerful new window into the large-scale structure of the universe
Researchers led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have released a major catalog of galaxy clusters, giving scientists a powerful new tool for studying how the universe grew and changed over billions of years.
Using exceptionally sensitive measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the faint afterglow of the Big Bang — the multi-institutional team confirmed 7,190 of 8,892 candidate galaxy clusters. The catalog is based on five years of observations from the SPT-3G experiment at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Amundsen Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.
Of those confirmed clusters, roughly 20% do not appear in any previous catalog, but the findings go even further: For 67% of the sample — some 4,824 systems — this marks the first time the hot gas within these clusters has ever been detected, making the majority of the catalog a genuinely new window into the large-scale structure of the universe.
