Search

We present the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS), a search for galaxy clusters at 0.7-30 degrees) and the remainder of the southern extragalactic sky at Dec, 26 pages, 17 figures, submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. Machine readable versions of tables 3-6 are included with the source files in the arXiv submission

We present confirmation of the cluster MOO J1142+1527, a massive galaxy cluster discovered as part of the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey. The cluster is confirmed to lie at $z=1.19$, and using the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy we robustly detect the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) decrement at 13.2$\sigma$. The SZ data imply a mass of $\mathrm{M}_{200m}=(1.1\pm0.2)\times10^{15}$ $\mathrm{M}_\odot$, making MOO J1142+1527 the most massive galaxy cluster known at $z>1.15$ and the second most massive cluster known at $z>1$. For a standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology it is further expected to be one of the $\sim 5$ most massive clusters expected to exist at $z\ge1.19$ over the entire sky. Our ongoing Spitzer program targeting $\sim1750$ additional candidate clusters will identify comparably rich galaxy clusters over the full extragalactic sky., Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letters, 6 pages, 4 figures