Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 544, Issue 1, Pages 104-108Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1086/317216
Keywords
galaxies : clusters : general; large-scale structure of universe
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We examine whether the major axes of rich galaxy clusters tend to point toward their nearest neighboring cluster. We have used the data of Ulmer, McMillan, and Kowalski, who used position angles based on X-ray morphology. We also study a subset of this sample with updated positions and distances from the MX Northern Abell Cluster Survey [for rich clusters (R greater than or equal to 1) with well-known redshifts]. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test shows no significant signal for nonrandom angles on any scale less than or equal to 100 h(-1) Mpc. However, refining the null hypothesis with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, we found a high confidence signal for alignment. Confidence levels increase to a high of 99.997%, since only near neighbors that are very close are considered. We conclude that there is a strong alignment signal in the data, consistent with gravitational instability acting on Gaussian perturbations.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available