Largest Galaxy Proto-Supercluster Found

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The Hyperion Proto-Supercluster 

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Comparison of the Hyperion Proto-Supercluster and a standard massive galaxy cluster

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Wide-field view of the COSMOS field

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Videos

PR Video eso1833a

ESOcast 179 Light: Largest Galaxy Proto-Supercluster Found (4K UHD)

PR Video eso1833b

The Hyperion Proto-Supercluster

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Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope uncover a cosmic titan lurking in the early Universe

An international team of astronomers using the VIMOS instrument of ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered a titanic structure in the early Universe. This galaxy proto-supercluster — which they nickname Hyperion — was unveiled by new measurements and a complex examination of archive data. This is the largest and most massive structure yet found at such a remote time and distance — merely 2 billion years after the Big Bang.

A team of astronomers, led by Olga Cucciati of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) Bologna, have used the VIMOS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to identify a gigantic proto-supercluster of galaxies forming in the early Universe, just 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang. This structure, which the researchers nicknamed Hyperion, is the largest and most massive structure to be found so early in the formation of the Universe [1]. The enormous mass of the proto-supercluster is calculated to be more than one million billion times that of the Sun. This titanic mass is similar to that of the largest structures observed in the Universe today, but finding such a massive object in the early Universe surprised astronomers.

“This is the first time that such a large structure has been identified at such a high redshift, just over 2 billion years after the Big Bang,” explained the first author of the discovery paper, Olga Cucciati [2]. “Normally these kinds of structures are known at lower redshifts, which means when the Universe has had much more time to evolve and construct such huge things. It was a surprise to see something this evolved when the Universe was relatively young!”

Located in the COSMOS field in the constellation of Sextans (The Sextant), Hyperion was identified by analysing the vast amount of data obtained from the VIMOS Ultra-deep Survey led by Olivier Le Fèvre (Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES). The VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey provides an unprecedented 3D map of the distribution of over 10 000 galaxies in the distant Universe.

The team found that Hyperion has a very complex structure, containing at least 7 high-density regions connected by filaments of galaxies, and its size is comparable to nearby superclusters, though it has a very different structure.

“Superclusters closer to Earth tend to a much more concentrated distribution of mass with clear structural features,” explains Brian Lemaux, an astronomer from University of California, Davis and LAM, and a co-leader of the team behind this result. “But in Hyperion, the mass is distributed much more uniformly in a series of connected blobs, populated by loose associations of galaxies.”

This contrast is most likely due to the fact that nearby superclusters have had billions of years for gravity to gather matter together into denser regions — a process that has been acting for far less time in the much younger Hyperion.

Given its size so early in the history of the Universe, Hyperion is expected to evolve into something similar to the immense structures in the local Universe such as the superclusters making up the Sloan Great Wall or the Virgo Supercluster that contains our own galaxy, the Milky Way. “Understanding Hyperion and how it compares to similar recent structures can give insights into how the Universe developed in the past and will evolve into the future, and allows us the opportunity to challenge some models of supercluster formation,” concluded Cucciati. “Unearthing this cosmic titan helps uncover the history of these large-scale structures.”

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Notes

[1] The moniker Hyperion was chosen after a Titan from Greek mythology, due to the immense size and mass of the proto-supercluster. The inspiration for this mythological nomenclature comes from a previously discovered proto-cluster found within Hyperion and named Colossus. The individual areas of high density in Hyperion have been assigned mythological names, such as Theia, Eos, Selene and Helios, the latter being depicted in the ancient statue of the Colossus of Rhodes.

The titanic mass of Hyperion, one million billion times that of the Sun, is 10¹⁵ solar masses in scientific notation.

[2] Light reaching Earth from extremely distant galaxies took a long time to travel, giving us a window into the past when the Universe was much younger. This wavelength of this light has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe over its journey, an effect known as cosmological redshift. More distant, older objects have a correspondingly larger redshift, leading astronomers to often use redshift and age interchangeably. Hyperion’s redshift of 2.45 means that astronomers observed the proto-supercluster as it was 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang.

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More Information

This research is published in the paper “The progeny of a Cosmic Titan: a massive multi-component proto-supercluster in formation at z=2.45 in VUDS”, which will appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The team behind this result was composed of O. Cucciati (INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), B. C. Lemaux (University of California, Davis, USA and LAM - Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, France), G. Zamorani (INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), O.Le Fèvre (LAM - Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, France), L. A. M. Tasca (LAM - Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, France), N. P. Hathi (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), K-G. Lee (Kavli IPMU (WPI), The University of Tokyo, Japan, & Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA), S. Bardelli (INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), P. Cassata (University of Padova, Italy), B. Garilli (INAF–IASF Milano, Italy), V. Le Brun (LAM - Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, France), D. Maccagni (INAF–IASF Milano, Italy), L. Pentericci (INAF–Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy), R. Thomas (European Southern Observatory, Vitacura, Chile), E. Vanzella (INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), E. Zucca (INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), L. M. Lubin (University of California, Davis, USA), R. Amorin (Kavli Institute for Cosmology & Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK), L. P. Cassarà (INAF–IASF Milano, Italy), A. Cimatti (University of Bologna & INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), M. Talia (University of Bologna, Italy), D. Vergani (INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy), A. Koekemoer (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA), J. Pforr (ESA ESTEC, the Netherlands), and M. Salvato (Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Garching bei München, Germany).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 16 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a strategic partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

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Links

• Research paper
• The VIMOS Ultra Deep Survey description
• Images of the VLT

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Contacts

Olga Cucciati
INAF Fellow – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna
Bologna, Italy
Email: olga.cucciati@inaf.it

Calum Turner
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Email: pio@eso.org

Source: ESO/News

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Subaru Telescope Detects the Shadow of a Gas Cloud in an Ancient Proto-supercluster

A team led by researchers from Osaka Sangyo University, with members from Tohoku University, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and others, has used the Suprime-Cam on the Subaru Telescope to create the most-extensive map of neutral hydrogen gas in the early universe (Figure 1). This cloud appears widely spread out across 160 million light-years in and around a structure called the proto-supercluster. It is the largest structure in the distant universe, and existed some 11.5 billion years ago. Such a huge gas cloud is extremely valuable for studying large-scale structure formation and the evolution of galaxies from gas in the early universe, and merits further investigation.

Figure 1: The distribution of galaxies in the proto-supercluster region 11.5 billion years ago (top left), and the Subaru Telescope Suprime-Cam image used in this work (right, larger image). Neutral hydrogen gas distribution is superposed on the Subaru image. The red color indicates denser regions of the neutral hydrogen gas. Cyan squares correspond to member galaxies in the proto-supercluster, while objects without cyan squares are foreground galaxies and stars. The distribution of neutral hydrogen gas does not align perfectly with the galaxies. (Credit: Osaka Sangyo University/NAOJ)

"We are surprised because the dense gas structure is extended much more than expected in the proto-supercluster," said Dr. Mawatari. "Wider field observations with narrow-band filters are needed to grasp full picture of this largest structure in the young Universe. This is exactly the type of strong research that can be done with Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) recently mounted at the Subaru Telescope. We intend to study the gas – galaxy relation in various proto-superclusters using the HSC."

Understanding Matter Distribution in the Universe

Stars assembled to form galaxies, and galaxies are clustered to form larger structures such as clusters or superclusters. Matter in the current universe is structured in a hierarchical manner on scales of ~ 100 million light-years. However, we cannot observe inhomogeneous structure in any direction or distance over scales larger than that. One important issue in modern astronomy is to clarify how perfectly the large-scale uniformity and homogeneity in matter distribution is maintained. In addition, astronomers seek to investigate the properties of the seeds of large-scale structures (i.e., the initial matter fluctuations) that existed at the beginning of the universe. Thus, it is important to observe huge structures at various epochs (which translates to distances). The study of gaseous matter as well as galaxies is needed for an accurate and comprehensive understanding. This is because local superclusters are known to be rich in gas. Furthermore, it is clear that there are many newborn galaxies in ancient (or distant) clusters. A detailed comparison between the spatial distributions of galaxies and gas during the early epochs of the universe is very important to understand process of galaxy formation from the dim (low light-emitting) clumps of gas in the early universe.

In order to investigate early, dim gas clouds, astronomers take advantage of the fact that light from bright distant objects gets dimmed by foreground gas (giving an effect like a "shadow picture"). Since neutral hydrogen in the gas cloud absorbs and dims light from background objects at a certain wavelength, we can see characteristic absorption feature in the spectrum of the background object. In many previous observations, researchers used quasars (which are very bright and distant) as background light sources. Because bright quasars are very rare, opportunities for such observations are limited. This allows astronomers to get information about the gas that lies only along the line of sight between a single QSO and Earth in a wide survey area. It has long been the goal to obtain "multi-dimensional" information of gas (e.g., spatially resolve the gas clouds) rather than the "one-dimensional" view currently available. This requires a new approach.

Expanding the View

To widen their view of these objects in the early universe, Dr. Ken Mawatari at Osaka Sangyo University and his colleagues recently developed a scheme to analyze the spatial distribution of the neutral hydrogen gas using imaging data of galaxies of the distant epoch (Figure 2). There are two major advantages to this approach. First, instead of rare quasars, the team uses numerous normal galaxies as background light sources to investigate gas distribution at various places in the search area. Second, they use imaging data taken with the narrow-band filter on Suprime-cam. It is fine-tuned so that light with certain wavelengths can be transmitted, to capture evidence of absorption by the neutral hydrogen gas (the shadow picture effect). Compared with the traditional scheme of observations based on spectroscopy of quasars, this new method enables Mawatari and his collaborators to obtain wide-area gas distribution information relatively quickly.

The researchers applied their scheme to the Subaru Telescope Suprime-Cam imaging data taken in their previous large survey of galaxies. The fields investigated in this work include the SSA22 field, an ancestor of a supercluster of galaxies (proto-supercluster), where young galaxies are formed actively, in the universe 11.5 billion years ago in the early universe.

Figure 2: Schematic pictures of an analysis scheme of previous work (left) and a new method (right). In the previous approach, basically a single background light source (quasar) can be used in a searched area. On the other hand, with the new scheme, it is easier to spatially resolve the neutral hydrogen gas density by using many normal galaxies in a searched area as background light sources. In the new scheme, absorption strength by the neutral hydrogen gas is estimated by measuring how much flux of the background galaxies becomes dimmed in the narrow-band image, not by using spectrum. By combining this scheme with the wide-area imaging ability of the Subaru Telescope, Mawatari, et al. made the most-extensive map of neutral hydrogen gas ever created. (Credit: Osaka Sangyo University/NAOJ)

New Maps of Neutral Hydrogen Distribution

The researchers' work resulted in very wide-area maps of the neutral hydrogen gas in the three fields studied (Figure 3). It appears that the neutral hydrogen gas absorption is significantly strong over the entire SSA22 proto-supercluster field compared with those in the normal fields (SXDS and GOODS-N). It is clearly confirmed that the proto-supercluster environment is rich in neutral hydrogen gas, which is the major building block of galaxies.

Figure 3: Sky distribution of the neutral hydrogen gas in the three fields studied in this work. While in the normal fields (SXDS and GOODS-N) the neutral hydrogen gas density is consistent with the average density in the entire universe at 11.5 billion years ago, the neutral hydrogen gas density is higher than the average over the entire SSA22 proto-supercluster field. Contours correspond to the galaxies' number density. Bold, solid thin, and dashed contours mean the average, high density, and low density regions, respectively. (Credit: Osaka Sangyo University/NAOJ)

The team's work also revealed that gas distribution in the proto-supercluster region does not align with the galaxies' distribution perfectly (see Figure 1 and Figure 3). While the proto-supercluster is rich in both galaxies and gas, there is no local-scale dependency of gas amount correlated with the density of galaxies inside the proto-supercluster. This result may mean that the neutral hydrogen gas not only is associated with the individual galaxies but also spreads out diffusely across intergalactic space only within the proto-supercluster. Since the neutral hydrogen gas excess in the SSA22 field is detected over the entire searched area, this overdense gas structure is actually extended more than 160 million light-years. In the traditional view of structure formation, matter density fluctuation is thought to be smaller and large-scale high-density structure was rarer in the early universe. The discovery that a gas structure that extends across more than 160 million light-years (which is roughly same as present-day superclusters in scale) already existed in the universe 11.5 billion years ago is a surprising result of this study.

By investigating spatial distribution of the neutral hydrogen gas in a very large area, the researchers have provided a new window on the relation between gas and galaxies in the young universe. The SSA22 huge gas structure revealed by this work is considered a key object to test the standard theory of structure formation, and so further investigation is anticipated.

This research will be published in the journal of the British Royal Astronomical Society (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, publisher Oxford University Press) in its June, 2017 issue of the printed version (Mawatari et al. 2017, MNRAS, 467, 3951, "Imaging of diffuse HI absorption structure in the SSA22 protocluster region at z = 3.1"). This work is supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid JP26287034 and JP16H06713.

Source: Subaru Telescope