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Monday, October 20, 2008

Galaxy Clusters Discovered with the SPT!

We are very excited to announce the South Pole Telescope's first major scientific results: detection of four galaxy clusters, three of which are new discoveries! We've been working hard over the last couple of months to analyze the data from the 2007 and 2008 observing seasons, and these first results are just the tip of the iceberg. On October 10th, we submitted a paper documenting the new discoveries to the Astrophysical Journal. The paper is available online here.

If you have been following our blog, you may remember that the SPT is a telescope sensitive to radiation (light) in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The telescope is designed to detect the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, which is light "left over" from the Big Bang. With telescopes like the SPT, we can map out the microwave sky and study this fascinating record of the early universe. One of the key scientific goals of South Pole Telescope is to search for places where the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) light has been distorted by large collections of matter and galaxies called galaxy clusters. When the CMB light passes through a galaxy cluster, its spectrum is changed through something called the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. By searching for the spots in the sky where the CMB is distorted in this way, we can find galaxy clusters and study their properties. If we are able to discover many galaxy clusters, we may be able to use them to learn more about the history of the expansion of the universe, and how it has been affected by the phenomenon known as Dark Energy. That was a pretty quick review, but if you want some more background details, take a look at our webpage.

It takes a lot of work to sort through the raw data from the SPT and make maps of the microwave sky. It then takes even more work to search those maps for clusters! We have only just started the whole data analysis process, but we were excited to immediately see four strong cluster signals in some of the maps that we made from our 2007 and 2008 data. We have detectors that are sensitive to three different wavelengths or frequencies of CMB light (basically three different colors). In the maps made from data taken with our 90GHz and 150GHz detectors, the cluster signature should look like a dark blob. We don't expect to see any sign of the cluster in the data taken with our 220GHz detectors. Having three different "colors" in this way gives us a couple of cross-checks to make sure that what we are seeing truly are clusters and not just features in the CMB itself (or some sort of noise).

Below is the main figure from our recent paper. The top row shows images of the four clusters. The color scale shows the intensity of radiation detected at 150GHz, and the dark blobs in the center are the four clusters. It's possible to filter the maps in order to pick out the cluster signal and ignore more of the background CMB patterns, and the rest of the rows of the figure show these filtered images. The clusters show up in 150GHz and 90GHz, but not at 220GHz, just as expected. The really exciting thing is that three of them are brand new discoveries - only the first one was previously seen by other telescopes.



We're celebrating our first results, but not slowing down! We have a lot of data that we haven't analyzed yet, and there are many more clusters hiding in it waiting to be discovered!

While those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have been hard at work analyzing data and preparing for the next summer season at pole, our tireless winterovers Keith Vanderlinde and Dana Hrubes have been keeping the telescope up and running and performing all of the observations. The sun finally rose at the South Pole not too long ago, and the very first airplane of the season is due to arrive at the pole sometime in the next 24 hours. It will bear, among other things, the first fresh fruits and vegetables that Keith and Dana have been able to eat for 8 months! They've done an amazing job and we all owe so much to their efforts. Hopefully they are both looking forward to vacations in warm locales in a few weeks.

One of the perks of enduring the dark cold winters at the South Pole is being able to experience the spectacular winter skies. Among the photographs that Keith has sent back, the one below has to be one of the most striking. It's almost enough to make you want to winterover!

22 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are a lot of pictures of the telescope and the crew however not many pictures are shown that were taken of space with the actual telescope. I seen a graph with some infrared shots, is this what all the pictures will look like or will we be seeing more appealing pictures of other areas in space?

10:36 AM  
Anonymous Rob said...

Awesome telescope stuff and images. Love looking at these things. Thanks,


Rob

11:20 PM  
Anonymous Stefano Berta said...

Hi,
I could not find this information anywhere. Do you plan to have a proposal open-time approach, sometimes soon?
Or is there some way to request observations with the SPT? And could you point me to some technical page showing me the performance?

Thanks a lot! And have fun at the Pole. I envy you so much! :D

Stefano

12:40 PM  
Anonymous Stefano Berta said...

Hi,
I could not find this information anywhere. Do you plan to have a proposal open-time approach, sometimes soon?
Or is there some way to request observations with the SPT? And could you point me to some technical page showing me the performance?

Thanks a lot! And have fun at the Pole. I envy you so much! :D

Stefano

12:40 PM  
Anonymous David said...

Congrats on the new discoveries and hope you find many more when your done analyzing the data.

2:18 AM  
Anonymous David said...

Congrats on the new discoveries and hope you find many more when your done analyzing the data.

2:18 AM  
Anonymous Jennifer Hoku said...

That final image is breathtaking! I hope to one day see that for myself - in person!

10:12 PM  
Anonymous Richard said...

Oh My! That image is absolutely amazing. Wouldn't it be great to go on vacation to there just to see the Northern lights?

7:48 AM  
Anonymous Chris said...

Is that last image a real image or taken by a computer? It looks really stunning as if somebody had animated it or something. Good work!

6:42 PM  
Anonymous Andrew said...

Breathtaking! So Awesome

2:15 PM  
Anonymous slot machine finder said...

How many total space pictures are out there? Is there a master file for these images and thanks for the great article.

7:22 PM  
Anonymous Divorce Survival said...

The last image looks really stunning...you guys are lucky that you got the chance to visit that amazing place and discover that..keep going and keep posting.

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