Abell Galaxy Clusters
Overview
The Abell Galaxy Clusters are rich clusters of galaxies akin to the Virgo Cluster. Each point in this data set contains tens to hundreds of galaxies. A handful of these Abell clusters overlap with the Tully Galaxies, but most are outside Tully.
A close-up of the Abell Galaxy Clusters, in orange. Select labels are shown with the prefix “ACO,” for Abell, Corwin, and Olowin, who released the final catalogue which included the southern hemisphere.
The Catalog
The Abell Catalog was compiled by George Abell (1927–1983) from the Palomar Sky Survey plates. He published the catalog in 1958, and a southern hemisphere survey was posthumously published in 1989 by Harold Corwin (b.1943) and Ronald Olowin (1945–2017). Further analysis by Brent Tully (b. 1943) determined their distance and three-dimensional distribution.
The distribution of Abell Clusters echoes that of the Tully Galaxies with two lobes on either side of the plane of the Milky Way. There is a completeness cut-off that makes the data set look squared off.
Labels with the prefix “ACO” (for Abell, Corwin, Olowin) are present on each point. They are designed to show only when points come into the foreground.
The Abell Clusters, in orange, shown with the Tully galaxies in the center in aqua, green and yellow. Within Tully, we see a rich structure with many individual galaxies visible. The Abell Clusters are akin to removing all the individual galaxies and seeing only the large clusters like the Virgo Cluster. Structure is lost because we’re only seeing the nexus points of the existing structure.
Large-scale Structure?
The Abell Galaxy Clusters show no prominent structure because we are only seeing the nexus points of structure—the large galaxy clusters. There are roughly 30 Abell Clusters within the Tully Galaxies, so this is a case of reducing 30,000 galaxies down to about 30 points. So we do not see the galaxy filaments, the details of each cluster, or the lower-level groups of galaxies that form the large-scale structure of the universe.
Superclusters
Galaxy clusters themselves form superclusters—groupings of galaxy clusters and larger structures. We can turn on the labels for these in to see where the major superclusters align with the Abell Clusters. We will discuss superclusters more in Supercluster Labels.
The Abell Galaxy Clusters shown with the Supercluster Labels on and the faint Tully Galaxies in the center. In most cases, one supercluster will contain multiple Abell Clusters. We can see this on the outskirts of the Tully Galaxies where the Hydra-Centaurus and Perseus-Pisces superclusters are made up of many Abell Clusters.
Profiles
Dossier
Census: |
2,246 galaxy clusters |
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Asset File: |
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OpenSpace Version: |
3 |
Reference: |
A Catalog of Rich Clusters of Galaxies; Private communication, Brent Tully |
Prepared by: |
Stuart Levy (NCSA), Brian Abbott (AMNH) |
Source Version: |
1.03 |
License: |