We present the observations, reduction and preliminary analysis of a sample of 45 mid-to-high redshift galaxy clusters imaged with the Spitzer Space Telescope's MIPS camera at 24 ~m and selected from the Red Sequence Cluster Survey. The purpose of the data set is motivated by a broad review of studies into the evolutionary trends of galaxy clusters and their constituent galaxy populations, focusing specifically on recent results that indicate clusters are environmental drivers of dusty starburst and active galactic nuclei activity. To accommodate the large amount of data in hand, we have constructed an extensive data reduction pipeline for the MIPS data and describe its development and output in detail. Using the resulting catalogues for introductory analysis, we find strong evidence for an excess luminous infrared galaxy population in galaxy clusters at high redshift and discuss the implications of this discovery in terms of cluster evolution and motivate future work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.111564 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | O'Donnell, D. V. (Daniel V.), 1983- |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Physics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 003163691, proquestno: AAIMR66744, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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