South Pole Telescope

January 6, 2011: Most massive z>1 galaxy cluster discovered with the South Pole Telescope.

October 10, 2008: Galaxy clusters discovered with the South Pole Telescope! Optical images of the first four galaxy clusters detected in the South Pole Telescope survey. Images are pseudo-color combinations of multiband data from the Blanco Cosmology Survey. The SPT position is marked with a 1-arcminute-diameter green circle. Populations of early-type galaxies with similar color and central giant elliptical galaxies are found to lie within 0.5$'$ of the SPT position of each system. Gravitational lensing arcs are apparent near the central galaxy in SPT-CL 0509-5342 and to the southwest of the cluster core in SPT-CL 0547-5345. The REFLEX position for SPT-CL 0517-5430 / RXCJ0516.6-5430 is indicated with a blue bullseye in the upper left panel, as are the positions of the possible RASS counterparts for SPT-CL 0547-5345 and SPT-CL 0509-5342 in their respective images.

SPT

Feburary, 2011: Recent results from the South Pole Telescope.

In the past 12 months, the South Pole Telescope team has reported a number of breakthrough scientific results, including the first cosmological constraints from a sample of SZ-discovered galaxy clusters (preprint here); the most precise measurement of the secondary anisotropy power spectrum of the CMB (preprint here); a sample of the most massive galaxy clusters in the full 2500-square-degree SPT-SZ survey region (preprint here); and the discovery and cosmological implications of the most massive known cluster at z > 1 (preprint here).

The South Pole Telescope is funded through the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs.