ASCA observations of the Sculptor supercluster Original Research Article

The Sculptor supercluser is a supercluster of galaxies with a redshift of 0.11, near the south Galactic pole. We observed central regions of the supercluster with ASCA in June 1996, Dec. 1996 and Dec. 1997. X-ray emission from several clusters in the supercluster was detected and properties of the clusters such as luminocity, temperature and metal abundance were analysed. No difference in X-ray properties were found between clusters in the supercluster and other clusters. We also searched for X-ray emission from hot diffuse plasma associated with the supercluster, and obtained an upper limit to the emission as 9.2 × 10−9 ergs s−1 cm−2 str−1 in 2 to 10 keV.