Galaxy clusters discovered with the South Pole Telescope, the SPT group at KICP

The first major scientific results from the South Pole Telescope initial survey were released on October 10, 2008. A paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal describes the detection of four distant, massive clusters of galaxies in an initial analysis of South Pole Telescope (SPT) survey data. Three of these galaxy clusters were previously unknown systems and, therefore, represent the first clusters detected using observations of the interaction between the hot gas in the cluster and Cosmic Microwave Background photons --- a process known as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. These first four galaxy clusters are the most significant SZ detections from a subset of the ongoing SPT survey. As such, they serve as a demonstration that SZ surveys, and the SPT in particular, can be an effective means for finding galaxy clusters. [more]