THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE TRACED BY RICH CLUSTERS OF GALAXIES

We study the whole-sky distribution of rich clusters of galaxies up to the distance z almost-equal-to 0.1 and present catalogues of superclu sters and cluster-defined voids. The data on clusters, superclusters a nd voids show the presence of the characteristic scale of 130 h-1 Mpc in the supercluster-void network, found earlier by Broadhurst et al. f rom a one-dimensional study. This scale has been detected in the distr ibution of clusters of richnesses R = 0 and R greater-than-or-equal-to 1. We perform tests to study the influence of projection effects. The clusters that do not belong to superclusters are located in the vicin ity of superclusters and form their outlying parts. We compare the dis tribution of ACO clusters with that of APM clusters. The APM clusters determine a smaller scale: 100 h-1 Mpc. We discuss the possible reason s for this difference.