Agrim Gupta

Undergraduate Research in the Neighborhoods

The goal of Agrim’s project was to identify the BCGs (Brightest Cluster Galaxies) for various clusters, as such galaxies are useful in studying cluster evolution, stellar formation, and the relationship between galaxy structure and dark matter halos. To identify these BCGs, various resources such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Digital Sky Survey, XMM Newton Archive, NASA Extragalactic Database etc. were used to study each cluster. Out of the 468 clusters in the ACCEPT 2.0 sample, 340 were determined to be unambiguous, meaning that each of those clusters had one specific BCG. The remaining ones have been analyzed, but they require discussion with Gupta’s research group members and Gupta’s professor and some even require more information than what is currently available. To sum it up, identification of these BCGs can be used in the X-ray profiling of the ACCEPT 2.0 clusters and thus, examine their cluster properties. 

Learn more about this and other research in the Neighborhood Engagement Centers.