Planck Early Results VIII: The all-sky Early Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster sample
astro-ph.CO
/ Authors
Planck Collaboration, P. A. R. Ade, N. Aghanim, M. Arnaud, M. Ashdown, J. Aumont, C. Baccigalupi, A. Balbi, A. J. Banday, R. B. Barreiro
and 228 more authors
M. Bartelmann, J. G. Bartlett, E. Battaner, R. Battye, K. Benabed, A. Benoît, J. -P. Bernard, M. Bersanelli, R. Bhatia, J. J. Bock, A. Bonaldi, J. R. Bond, J. Borrill, F. R. Bouchet, M. L. Brown, M. Bucher, C. Burigana, P. Cabella, C. M. Cantalupo, J. -F. Cardoso, P. Carvalho, A. Catalano, L. Cayón, A. Challinor
/ Abstract
We present the first all-sky sample of galaxy clusters detected blindly by the Planck satellite through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect from its six highest frequencies. This early SZ (ESZ) sample is comprised of 189 candidates, which have a high signal-to-noise ratio ranging from 6 to 29. Its high reliability (purity above 95%) is further ensured by an extensive validation process based on Planck internal quality assessments and by external cross-identification and follow-up observations. Planck provides the first measured SZ signal for about 80% of the 169 previously-known ESZ clusters. Planck furthermore releases 30 new cluster candidates, amongst which 20 meet the ESZ signal-to-noise selection criterion. At the submission date, twelve of the 20 ESZ candidates were confirmed as new clusters, with eleven confirmed using XMM-Newton snapshot observations, most of them with disturbed morphologies and low luminosities. The ESZ clusters are mostly at moderate redshifts (86% with z below 0.3) and span more than a decade in mass, up to the rarest and most massive clusters with masses above 10^15 Msol.