Recent simulations of the densest portion of the Corona Borealis supercluster (A2061, A2065, A2067, and A2089) have shown virtually no possibility of extended gravitationally bound structure without inter-cluster matter (Pearson & Batuski). In contra
st, recent analyses of the dynamics found that the clusters had significant peculiar velocities towards the supercluster centroid (Batiste & Batuski). In this paper we present the results of a thorough investigation of the CSC: we determine redshifts and virial masses for all 8 clusters associated with the CSC; repeat the analysis of Batiste & Batuski with the inclusion of A2056 and CL1529+29; estimate the mass of the supercluster by applying the virial theorem on the supercluster scale (e.g. Small et al.), the caustics method (e.g. Reisenegger et al.), and a new procedure using the spherical collapse model (SCM) with the results of the dynamical analysis (SCM+FP); and perform a series of simulations to assess the likelihood of the CSC being a gravitationally bound supercluster. We find that the mass of the CSC is between 0.6 and 12 x 10^{16} h^{-1} M_{sun}. The dynamical analysis, caustics method and the SCM+FP indicate that the structure is collapsing, with the latter two both indicating a turn around radius of about 12.5 h^{-1} Mpc. Lastly, the simulations show that with a reasonable amount of inter-cluster mass, there is likely extended bound structure in the CSC. Our results suggest that A2056, A2061, A2065, A2067, and A2089 form a gravitationally bound supercluster.
Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey we assess the current dynamical state of the Corona Borealis Supercluster (CSC), a highly dense and compact supercluster at z = 0.07. The Fundamental Plane relation is used to determine redshift independen
t distances to six clusters in the densest region of the supercluster, with mean accuracy in the relative distance estimates of 4 per cent. Peculiar velocities determined from these distance estimates indicate that the clusters have broken from the Hubble Flow, suggesting that the CSC likely contains two regions that have reached turnaround and are currently undergoing gravitational collapse. These results provide the strongest observational evidence to date that the CSC is a bound system similar to the much more extensive Shapley Supercluster, which is the most extensive confirmed bound supercluster yet identified in the Universe. When compared with simulations of the CSC our results require substantially more mass than is contained within the clusters, possibly indicating a significant inter-cluster dark matter component. In order to facilitate comparison with studies for which spectroscopic data are not available, an alternative analysis of the dynamics is made using the Kormendy relation as a distance indicator. The results are generally consistent with those of the Fundamental Plane and suggest similar global dynamics, but we find that the relatively sparse sampling of the clusters makes the Kormendy relation less reliable overall and more susceptible to small systematic differences between the cluster samples.
