Mass measurements of astronomical objects are most wanted but still elusive. We need them to trace the formation and evolution of cosmic structure but we can get direct measurements only for a minority. This lack can be circumvented with a proxy and a scaling relation. The twofold goal of estimating the unbiased relation and finding the right proxy value to plug in can be hampered by systematics, selection effects, Eddington/Malmquist biases and time evolution. We present a Bayesian hierarchical method that deals with these issues. Masses to be predicted are treated as missing data in the regression and are estimated together with the scaling parameters. The calibration subsample with measured masses does not need to be representative of the full sample as far as it follows the same scaling relation. We apply the method to forecast weak lensing calibrated masses of the Planck, redMaPPer and MCXC clusters. Planck masses are biased low with respect to weak lensing calibrated masses, with a bias more pronounced for high-redshift clusters. MCXC masses are under-estimated by ~20 per cent, which may be ascribed to hydrostatic bias. Packages and catalogues are made available with the paper.
We present a catalogue of structural parameters for 8814 galaxies in the 25 fields of the Hubble Space Telescope/ACS Coma Treasury Survey. Parameters from Sersic fits to the two-dimensional surface brightness distributions are given for all galaxies from our published Coma photometric catalogue with mean effective surface brightness brighter than 26.0mag/arcsec^2^ and brighter than 24.5mag (equivalent to absolute magnitude -10.5), as given by the fits, all in F814W(AB). The sample comprises a mixture of Coma members and background objects; 424 galaxies have redshifts and of these 163 are confirmed members. The fits were carried out using both the GIM2D and GALFIT codes.
A catalogue of compact groups identified on the SDSS DR12 is provided. Compact Groups were identified in redshift space with a modified Hickson-like algorithm. The catalogue comprises 462 compact groups of which 406 clearly fulfil all the compact group requirements: compactness, isolation and velocity concordance of all of their members. The remaining 56 groups need further redshift information of potentially contaminating sources.
Applying an automatic neighbour search algorithm to the 3D UZC galaxy catalogue (Falco et al., 1999, Cat. <J/PASP/111/438>) we have identified 291 compact groups (CGs) with radial velocity between 1000 and 10000km/s. The sample is analysed to investigate whether Triplets display kinematical and morphological characteristics similar to higher order CGs (Multiplets). It is found that Triplets constitute low velocity dispersion structures, have a gas-rich galaxy population and are typically retrieved in sparse environments. Conversely Multiplets show higher velocity dispersion, include few gas-rich members and are generally embedded structures. Evidence hence emerges indicating that Triplets and Multiplets, though sharing a common scale, correspond to different galaxy systems. Triplets are typically field structures whilst Multiplets are mainly subclumps (either temporarily projected or collapsing) within larger structures. Simulations show that selection effects can only partially account for differences, but significant contamination of Triplets by field galaxy interlopers could eventually induce the observed dependences on multiplicity.
The catalog is a compilation of ten published lists of compact groups of compact galaxies found on the Palomar Sky Survey red charts. The catalog contains 377 groups of compact galaxies and includes identifications, equatorial coordinates, numbers of constituent galaxies, magnitudes of the brightest member, sizes of the groups as a whole, and coefficients of relative compactness.
We present a photometric catalogue of compact groups of galaxies (p2MCGs) automatically extracted from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) extended source catalogue. A total of 262 p2MCGs are identified, following the criteria defined by Hickson, of which 230 survive visual inspection (given occasional galaxy fragmentation and blends in the 2MASS parent catalogue). Only one quarter of these 230 groups were previously known compact groups (CGs). Among the 144 p2MCGs that have all their galaxies with known redshifts, 85 (59%) have four or more accordant galaxies. This v2MCG sample of velocity-filtered p2MCGs constitutes the largest sample of CGs (with N>=4) catalogued to date, with both well-defined selection criteria and velocity filtering, and is the first CG sample selected by stellar mass. It is fairly complete up to K_group_~9 and radial velocity of ~6000km/s.
We have recently extracted a catalog of compact groups of galaxies (CGs) from the Las Campanas Redshift Survey. This catalog of Las Campanas Compact Groups (LCCGs) contains 76 CGs with a median redshift of z_med_~0.08. The physical properties of these CGs are similar to those form Hickson (1982, Cat. <VII/213>) and the Barton et al. (1996AJ....112..871B) catalogs. Here, we present an atlas of our catalog and briefly describe its general properties.
We investigate the properties of photometrically selected compact groups (CGs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In this paper, the fourth in a series, we focus on understanding the characteristics of our observed CG sample with particular attention paid to quantifying and removing contamination from projected foreground or background galaxies. Based on a simple comparison of pairwise redshift likelihoods, we find that approximately half of CGs in the parent sample contain one or more projected (interloping) members; our final clean sample contains 4566 galaxies in 1086 CGs.
We present the largest publicly available catalogue of compact groups (CGs) of galaxies identified using the original selection criteria of Hickson, selected from the Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR6). We identify 2297 CGs down to a limiting magnitude of r=18 (~0.24groups/deg^2^), and 74791 CGs down to a limiting magnitude of r=21 (~6.7groups/deg^2^). This represents 0.9 per cent of all galaxies in the SDSS DR6 at these magnitude levels.
We have obtained spectroscopic redshifts of colour-selected point sources in four wide area VLT-FLAMES (Very Large Telescope-Fibre Large Array Multi Element Spectrograph) fields around the Fornax cluster giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1399, identifying as cluster members 27 previously unknown faint (-10.5<M_g'_<-8.8) compact stellar systems (CSS), and improving redshift accuracy for 23 previously catalogued CSS.
