X-Ray Galaxy Clusters Database



     

Clusters of galaxies are the largest virialized systems in the Universe and hence are thought to be useful probes of the universe. Historically they played an important role in cosmology as the first evidence of the dark matter has been found from galaxy clusters studies Zwicky (1933).
The analysis of their statistical properties and their evolution with redshift (temperature and luminosity functions) allow to constrain the cosmological parameters and to place strong constraints on large scale structure theories (Oukbir & Blanchard 1992, Hattori and Matsuzawa 1995, Eke et al 1996). The study of chemical abundances in the intracluster cluster medium (ICM) and its evolution should provide uswith valuable information on metal enrichment of the universe and the history of nucleosynthesis in the universe and therefore on the star formation history (Mushotzky & Lowenstein 1997). In the '70 it has been discovered that galaxy clusters are strong emitters and it has been realized that crucial information can be obtained from X-Rays data and several space missions have been devoted to X-Rays observations (HEAO-1,3, Einstein (HEAO-2), EXOSAT, Ginga, ROSAT, BeppoSAX, ASCA) and more recently RXTE, XMM-NEWTON and Chandra . X-Rays observations of clusters have been increased rapidly in the last years resulting in large amount of X-ray data for thousands groups and clusters of galaxies published in an exponentially increasing number of publications.


BAX is designed to provide access to the growing number of data on X-ray galaxy clusters BAX is an online research database designed to support scientists, space missions and ground based observatories in the planning, interpretation and publication of their research on galaxy clusters.
BAX contains :
Depending on the menu query, the user can search for a given cluster name or a set of clusters that meet a choosen selection criteria, this criteria can be either on cluster position or on the observational measurements or on some bibliographical keywords. For each published measurement, BAX gives the bibliographic references with a World Wide Web (WWW) interface link to the Abstract Service of the Astrophysics Data System (ADS)  paper.

 

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