This thesis presents the results of a spectroscopic survey of the RCS2319+00 supercluster field using the VIMOS instrument on the 8-meter Very Large Telescope. This system is a rare and massive high-redshift structure, comprising at least three galaxy clusters at z = 0.9, separated by less than 3 Mpc, and is one of the few examples of the progenitors of present-day massive galaxy clusters. / We measure 638 new redshifts from a sample of 1134 target sources, 49 of which are consistent with the supercluster redshift. Redshifts are also obtained for 24 radio galaxies within the field, with 6 of these identified as cluster members. We combine the VIMOS redshift catalogue with the data analyzed by Gilbank et al. (2008) from the IMACS spectrograph on the 6-meter Magellan telescope for a total of 1051 redshifts over an area of ∼ 30 x 30 square arcminutes, with 94 spectroscopically confirmed supercluster members. From this combined data set the mean spectroscopic redshifts of the three galaxy clusters were refined and found to be zspec = 0.9056, 0.9041, and 0.9047 for clusters A, B, and C respectively. A new velocity dispersion of sigmav = (1300 +/- 410) km S-1 was calculated for the largest component cluster, A, and was used to estimate a new cluster membership redshift range of 0.8857 ≤ z ≤ 0.9239. / These data will facilitate further scientific study of RCS2319+00 and will shed light on the evolution of massive clusters, hierarchical structure formation, and galaxy evolution. In combination with other spectroscopy this data will allow: the full extent of the supercluster and its substructure in redshift space to be traced; a determination of the dynamical masses of the individual sub-clusters; and a study of the galaxy population within the structure, in particular the star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei as traced by radio and infrared emission.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.111567 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Faloon, Ashley J., 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: 003164206, proquestno: AAIMR66869, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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