Bibcode
Ramella, M.; Boschin, W.; Fadda, D.; Nonino, M.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.368, p.776-786 (2001)
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3
2001
Journal
Citations
159
Refereed citations
121
Description
We present an objective and automated procedure for detecting clusters
of galaxies in imaging galaxy surveys. Our Voronoi Galaxy Cluster Finder
(VGCF) uses galaxy positions and magnitudes to find clusters and
determine their main features: size, richness and contrast above the
background. The VGCF uses the Voronoi tessellation to evaluate the local
density and to identify clusters as significative density fluctuations
above the background. The significance threshold needs to be set by the
user, but experimenting with different choices is very easy since it
does not require a whole new run of the algorithm. The VGCF is
non-parametric and does not smooth the data. As a consequence, clusters
are identified irrespective of their shape and their identification is
only slightly affected by border effects and by holes in the galaxy
distribution on the sky. The algorithm is fast, and automatically
assigns members to structures. A test run of the VGCF on the PDCS field
centered at alpha = 13h26m and delta = +29degr
52arcmin (J2000) produces 37 clusters. Of these clusters, 12 are VGCF
counterparts of the 13 PDCS clusters detected at the 3sigma level and
with estimated redshifts from z=0.2 to z=0.6. Of the remaining 25
systems, 2 are PDCS clusters with confidence level <3sigma and
redshift z <= 0.6. Inspection of the 23 new VGCF clusters indicates
that several of these clusters may have been missed by the matched
filter algorithm for one or more of the following reasons: a) they are
very poor, b) they are extremely elongated, c) they lie too close to a
rich and/or low redshift cluster. The code described in this paper is
available on request.