Care for Creation and Works of Mercy

In this age of disquiet owing to climate change and contemporary ecological-social calamities, a pastoral Church needs to form servant-leaders who can be imaginative practitioners of ecological works of mercy, or who can sow seeds of the New Creation, which reveals the freedom, fidelity, empathy, and eco-social responsibility and maturity of God's sons and daughters in Christ

Distant Galaxy Clusters Identified From Optical Background Fluctuations

We present the first high redshift (0.3 < z < 1.1) galaxy clusters found by systematically identifying optical low surface brightness fluctuations in the background sky. Using spectra obtained with the Keck telescope and I-band images from the Palomar 1.5m telescope, we conclude that at least eight of the ten candidates examined are high redshift galaxy clusters. The identification of such clusters from low surface brightness fluctuations provides a complementary alternative to classic selection methods based on overdensities of resolved galaxies, and enables us to search efficiently for rich high redshift clusters over large areas of the sky. The detections described here are the first in a survey that covers a total of nearly 140 sq. degrees of the sky and should yield, if these preliminary results are representative, over 300 such clusters.Comment: Submitted to ApJ