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Formation Times for Rich Clusters of Galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2016

B. M. Lewis*
Affiliation:
Carter Observatory, Wellington

Extract

Rich clusters of galaxies are a common feature of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Those studied so far, show striking regularities with

  1. (a) a smooth radial gradient of number density.

  2. (b) ’isothermal’ distributions, which according to Bahcall (1975) have a scatter of only ±15% in the size of their characteristic core radii.

  3. (c) their limiting structural diameters are ~50 Mpc (cf. Abell, 1975), if they are identified with superclusters.

  4. (d) the magnitude of the velocity dispersion about their centres is generally 600-1000 km s-1, and the velocities are cpnsistent with a gaussian distribution (Yahil and Vidal, 1976; also Faber and Dressier, 1976).

  5. (e) The extreme velocities are generally within ±3000 km s-1, and for Coma are ∼2400 km s-1 (Tifft and Gregory, 1976).

  6. (f) elliptical galaxies tend to predominate near the centre, spirals in the surrounding loose groups.

Type
Contributions
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1977

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