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Color image of the galaxy density map at redshift of 0.36 from eROSITA's Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). White circles mark the location of the eight galaxy clusters forming the new supercluster. Credit: Ghirardini et al., 2020.

By analyzing the data from the eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new supercluster. The newly found structure consists of eight galaxy clusters. The discovery is reported in a paper published December 21 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Containing various structures with a range of masses, from massive and dense clusters of galaxies to low-density bridges, filaments and sheets of matter, superclusters are among the largest structures in the known universe. Finding and investigating superclusters in detail could be essential in order to improve our understanding of the formation and evolution of large cosmic filaments.

Now, a group of astronomers led by Vittorio Ghirardini of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, reports the discovery of a new supercluster. The structure was identified by the eFEDS survey during its Performance Verification (PV) phase.