REFLEX galaxies redshifts

2009

We present the final data from the spectroscopic survey of the ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-ray (REFLEX) catalogue of galaxy clusters. The REFLEX survey covers 4.24 steradians (34% of the entire sky) below a declination +2.50{deg} and at high galactic latitude (|b|<20{deg}). The full survey includes 447 galaxy clusters with a median redshift of 0.08 and is better than 90% complete to a limiting flux of f_X_=3x10^-12^ergs/s/cm^2^ (3fW/m^2^, 0.1 to 2.4keV), representing the largest statistically homogeneous sample of clusters to date drawn from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS). Here we describe the details of the spectroscopic observations carried out at the ESO 1.5m, 2.2m and 3.6m telescopes, the…