A&A 445, 819–825 (2006) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20053623 & c ESO 2006 Astrophysics Identification and study of systems of galaxies in the Shapley supercluster C. J. Ragone1,2, H. Muriel1,2, D. Proust3, A. Reisenegger4, and H. Quintana4 1 Grupo de Investigaciones en Astronomía Teórica y Experimental, IATE, Observatorio Astronómico, Laprida 854, Córdoba, Argentina 2 Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de la República Argentina e-mail: [cin;hernan]@oac.uncor.edu 3 GEPI, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, 92195 Meudon Cedex, France e-mail:
[email protected] 4 Departamento de Astronomía y Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile e-mail: [areisene;hquintana]@astro.puc.cl Received 13 June 2005 / Accepted 7 September 2005 ABSTRACT Based on the largest compilation of galaxies with redshift in the region of the Shapley Supercluster (Proust et al. 2004, P2004), we identified 122 galaxy systems, 60 of which are new systems. Using the SuperCOSMOS catalogue, we have assigned b j magnitudes to each galaxy in our 13 15 −1 compilation. The sample of galaxy systems was used to estimate the mass function of systems in the range 10 to 10 M h . We computed a lower value to the total mass in the region of the Shapley Supercluster with this mass function. Using 15 mock catalogues we derived the mean mass that these kinds of systems have before comparing it with that obtained from the real data. Key words. galaxies: clusters: general 1. Introduction representing an overdensity range ρ/ρc ∼ 3−20. In this work we explore an alternative way to estimate a lower limit to the to- The Shapley Supercluster (hereafter SSC) has the highest con- tal mass of the SSC.