• The XBACs team
• Project overview
• The sample
• Publications

The XBACs team:

• Harald Ebeling (PhD thesis)
• Hans Böhringer, MPE Garching, Germany (thesis supervisor)
• Andy Fabian's X-ray group, University of Cambridge, UK (moral and scientific support)

• Jean-Paul Kneib, Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees, France
• Ian Smail, University of Durham, UK
• Graham Smith, University of Durham, UK
• Oliver Czoske, Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees, France

Project overview:

XBACs, a sample comprising the 242 X-ray brightest Abell (ACO) clusters of galaxies in the extragalactic sky (|b| > 20 deg) was the first X-ray flux limited sample of clusters of galaxies to be compiled from ROSAT All-Sky Survey data. Although not X-ray selected (all XBACs clusters were initially discovered by George Abell and collaborators) the sample has proven tremendously useful for studies of the local (z < 0.2) cluster population.

The compilation and characterization of the XBACs sample was the subject of my PhD thesis (MPE Report 250, ISSN 0178-0719).

The sample: Unabridged and complete electronic table that combines Tables 3 and 4 of the paper listed below.

(LaTeX to ASCII conversion and merging Of both tables by Heinz Andernach)

XBACs publications (by the XBACs team):

• Ebeling H., Voges W., Böhringer H., Edge A.C., Huchra J.P., Briel U.G.

  Properties of the X-ray-brightest Abell-type clusters of galaxies (XBACs) from ROSAT All-Sky Survey data - I. The sample, 1996, MNRAS, 281, 799

There is a lot more science to be extracted from this sample, and one day I hope to get around to writing some of it up...

Note that the table published in the above paper lacks 6 clusters which were omitted from page 823 due to a typesetting error. We are grateful to Heinz Andernach for pointing this out to us. An erratum has been published in MNRAS (1996, 283, 1103).

(page last updated by H. Ebeling, January 9, 2001)