Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2000-05-19
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Minor revisions. To be published in ApJ
Scientific paper
10.1086/317216
We have examined 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 studied a subset of this sample with updated positions and distances from the MX Northern Abell Cluster Survey (for rich clusters ($R \geq 1$) with well known redshifts). A Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test showed no significant signal for nonrandom angles on any scale $\leq 100h^{-1}$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% as only near neighbors which are very close are considered. We conclude there is a strong alignment signal in the data, consistent with gravitational instability acting on Gaussian perturbations.
Chambers Scott W.
Melott Adrian L.
Miller Christopher J.
No associations
LandOfFree
Einstein Cluster Alignments Revisited does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Einstein Cluster Alignments Revisited, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Einstein Cluster Alignments Revisited will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-616860