GALAXY COUNTS ON THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND COLD SPOT

Journal Article · Sat May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/714/1/825· OSTI ID:21448859

Granett, Benjamin R; Szapudi, Istvan ^[1]

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1. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)

The cold spot on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) could arise due to a supervoid at low redshift through the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. We imaged the region with MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and present galaxy counts in photometric redshift bins. We rule out the existence of a 100 Mpc radius spherical supervoid with underdensity {delta} = -0.3 at 0.5 < z < 0.9 at high significance. The data are consistent with an underdensity at low redshift, but the fluctuations are within the range of cosmic variance and the low-density areas are not contiguous on the sky. Thus, we find no strong evidence for a supervoid. We cannot resolve voids smaller than a 50 Mpc radius; however, these can only make a minor contribution to the CMB temperature decrement.

• OSTI ID: 21448859
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 714, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/714/1/825; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
BACKGROUND RADIATION
COSMOLOGY
GALAXIES
RED SHIFT
RELICT RADIATION
SPHERICAL CONFIGURATION
TELESCOPES
UNIVERSE
CONFIGURATION
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
MICROWAVE RADIATION
RADIATIONS