Optical Follow-up of Planck Cluster Candidates with Small Instruments

We have recently made public a preprint [1] about a very specialized work in which we have tested the feasibility to use small telescopes to make optical follow-up of Planck cluster candidates detected by the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect.

The above picture shows the redshift distribution obtained over a hundred objects, most probably galaxies, detected within $$3'$$ from the center of an unconfirmed Planck’s SZ candidate.

In summary, with a 0.6 meter telescope, photometric redshift measurements are possible in a redshift range of $$z_{\mathrm{phot}} \simeq 0.1$$ up to $$z_{\mathrm{phot}} \gtrsim 0.6$$. This opens-up the possiblity for amateur astronomers to collectively contribute to SZ candidate validation with basic observables such as $$z_\mathrm{phot}$$ and galaxy counts.

References

• [1] Boucher V, Visscher S de and Ringeval C 2018 Optical Follow-up of Planck Cluster Candidates with Small Instruments Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac. 130 104001