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 compilation. The sample of galaxy systems was used to estimate the mass function of systems in the range 10 13 to 10 15 M ⊙h -1. 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. © ESO 2006.