Radio Observations on Cosmic Filaments

The Millennium Simulation depicting galaxy clusters connected together by cosmic filaments. Image credit: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

Cosmic filaments are strands of dark matter and galaxies connecting galaxy clusters in the cosmic web. They are the largest structures in the Universe, and contains most of the mass in the Universe. The first evidence of cosmic filaments was found in 1987 with the discovery of the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex (Tully, 1986), and the largest filament found so far is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall at 3 gpc.

I researched on galaxy cluster and cosmic filament observations using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to compare their radio characteristics. I developed a pseudo-automated RFI flagging procedure for the visibility data, and a method to improve the accuracy of galaxy detection near the noisy beam edges based on detection weighting and importance sampling.

The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in Narrabri, New South Wales, Australia. Image credit: CSIRO

References

1986

  1. ApJ
    Alignment of clusters and galaxies on scales up to 0.1 C
    R. B. Tully
    The Astrophysical Journal, Apr 1986
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