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ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-Ray (REFLEX) Galaxy Cluster Survey

Published by High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | Metadata Last Checked: October 19, 2025 | Last Modified: 2025-09-10
This table is the ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-Ray (REFLEX) Galaxy Cluster Survey Catalog. The REFLEX Cluster Survey provides information on the X-ray properties, redshifts, and some identification details of clusters in the REFLEX sample. The catalog describes a statistically complete X-ray flux-limited sample of 447 galaxy clusters above an X-ray flux of 3 x 10<sup>-12</sup> erg/s/cm<sup>2</sup> (0.1 to 2.4 keV) in an area of 4.24 steradians in the southern sky. The cluster candidates were first selected by their X-ray emission in the ROSAT-All Sky Survey and subsequently spectroscopically identified in the frame of an ESO key program. Previously described tests have shown that the sample is more than 90% complete and there is a conservative upper limit of 9% on the fraction of clusters with a dominant X-ray contamination from AGN. This data set is at present the largest, statistically complete X-ray galaxy cluster sample. The sample forms the basis of several cosmological studies, one of the most important applications being the assessment of the statistics of the large-scale structure of the universe and the test of cosmological models. The X-ray luminosities and other distance-dependent cluster parameters are calculated for a Lambda cosmology with a Hubble Constant H<sub>0</sub> of 70 km/s/Mpc, Omega<sub>M</sub> of 0.3, and Omega<sub>Lambda</sub> of 0.7. The CDS version of this catalog contains an additional table (reflex50.dat) with these parameters calculated for an Einstein-de Sitter universe with H<sub>0</sub> = 50 km/s/Mpc, Omega<sub>M</sub> = 1.0, and Omega<sub>Lambda</sub> = 0.0. This table was created by the HEASARC in October 2004 based on CDS tables J/A+A/425/367/reflex70.dat and J/A+A/425/367/reflex.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

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