Toward Discovery of Gravitationally Lensed Explosive Transients: The Brightest Galaxies in Massive Galaxy Clusters from Planck-SZ2

Abstract

We combine the Planck-SZ2 galaxy cluster catalog with near-infrared photometry of galaxies from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey to identify candidate brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in 306 massive clusters in the Southern skies at redshifts of z > 0.1. We find that 91% of these clusters have at least one candidate BCG within the 95% confidence interval on the cluster centers quoted by the Planck collaboration, providing reassurance that our analyses are statistically compatible, and find 92% to be reasonable candidates following a manual inspection. We make our catalog publicly available to assist colleagues interested in multi-wavelength studies of cluster cores, and the search for gravitationally lensed explosive transients in upcoming surveys including the Legacy Survey of Space and Time by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.