The richest superclusters

Morphology.

M. Einasto, E. Saar, L. J. Liivamägi, J. Einasto, E. Tago, V. J. Martinez, J.-L. Starck, V. Müller, P. Heinämäki, P. Nurmi, M. Gramann and G. Hütsi

We use Minkowski functionals and shapefinders to quantify the morphology of the richest superclusters from the catalogues of superclusters of galaxies in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and compare the morphology of real superclusters with model superclusters in the Millennium Simulation. We generate empirical models of simple geometry to understand which morphologies correspond to the supercluster shapefinders.

We show that rich superclusters have elongated, filamentary shapes with high-density clumps in their core regions. The clumpiness of superclusters is determined using the fourth Minkowski functional V3. In the K1-K2 shapefinder plane the morphology of superclusters is described by a curve which is characteristic to multi-branching filaments. We use empirical models to analyze shapefinder K1-K2 plane. We also find that the differences between the fourth Minkowski functional V3 for the bright and faint galaxies in observed superclusters are larger than in simulated superclusters.

The density field view of some superclusters from our study:

SCL126