The Leo Supercluster

The Leo Supercluster is not a particularly famous supercluster. This map below is a plot of the brightest galaxies (from the Principal Galaxies Catalogue) in the vicinity of this supercluster. The supercluster is about 440 million light years from us, and at this distance a fairly weak supercluster like the Leo supercluster is hard to see among all the foreground galaxies. The nearer Coma supercluster is in this area as can be seen from the presence of the large A1367 cluster, and even closer to us is the nearby Virgo cluster at the bottom left of the map.

The Leo Supercluster

Below is a list of the major clusters in the Leo Supercluster. The richest cluster is probably the A1185 cluster. Most of the other clusters are rather poor clusters with a richness class of 0. The cluster A1314 is also included in this list although it lies some distance to the north of the supercluster and it may not be a true member.

   1         2       3        4         5       6      7  
 Abell       Equatorial    Redshift  Distance  Rich  Notes
 Number     Coordinates       z        Mly                
            RA       Dec                                  
 A999     10 23.4  +12 51   .0311      430      0         
 A1016    10 27.0  +10 59   .0310      425      0         
 A1142    11 00.9  +10 33   .0337      465      0         
 A1177    11 09.5  +21 42   .0304      420      0         
 A1185    11 10.8  +28 41   .0313      430      1         
 A1228    11 21.5  +34 20   .0340      465      1         
 A1257    11 26.1  +35 19   .0332      455      0         
 A1267    11 27.9  +26 51   .0317      435      0         
 A1314    11 34.8  +49 02   .0323      445      0         
Column 1: The name/number of the cluster or group.
Column 2: The Right Ascension for epoch 2000.
Column 3: The Declination for epoch 2000.
Column 4: The redshift of the cluster.
Column 5: The distance in millions of light years assuming H=70km/s/Mpc.
Column 6: The 'richness' class of the cluster.
Column 7: Additional names and notes.

References:
Abell G, Corwin H, Olowin R, (1989), A catalogue of Rich Clusters of Galaxies, 
          Astrophys J Supp, 70, 1.
Struble M, Rood H, (1999), A compilation of redshifts and velocity dispersions for 
          ACO clusters, Astrophys J, 125, 35.

The Scientific Study of the Leo Supercluster

There has been no proper scientific research conducted on this supercluster. Occasionally, some of the clusters are studied, this is especially true of A1185, which is probably the richest cluster in the supercluster. The cluster was studied by Mahdavi, Geller, Fabricant, Kurtz, Postman and McLean in a paper in 1996. More recently in 2000, Botashev, Verkhodanov, Cardona, Lipovka, Lipovka, Mingaliev and Chavira produced a catalogue of the galaxies in the vicinity of the cluster.


Below is a picture of the centre of the A1185 cluster. It is probably the most important cluster in the Leo supercluster. This cluster is about the same size as the Virgo cluster and has a similar number of galaxies. The brightest galaxy here (at the top of the picture) is NGC3550.

A1185 - from the Digitized Sky Survey
The nearest superclusters Back to the Neighbouring Superclusters page