  The WARPS team reviews the properties and history of discovery of
ClJ0152.7-1357, an X-ray luminous, rich cluster of galaxies at z=0.833. At L_X
= 8 x 10^44 h^(-2) erg/s (0.5-2.0 keV) ClJ0152.7-1357 is the most X-ray
luminous cluster known at redshifts z>0.55. The high X-ray luminosity of the
system suggests that massive clusters may begin to form at redshifts
considerably greater than unity. This scenario is supported by the high degree
of optical and X-ray substructure in ClJ0152.7-1357, which is similarly complex
as that of other X-ray selected distant clusters and consistent with the
picture of cluster formation by mass infall along large-scale filaments. X-ray
emission from ClJ0152.7-1357 was detected already in 1980 with the EINSTEIN
IPC. However, because the complex morphology of the emission caused its
significance to be underestimated, the corresponding source was not included in
the EMSS cluster sample and hence not previously identified. Simulations of the
EMSS source detection and selection procedure suggest a general bias of the
EMSS against X-ray luminous clusters with pronounced substructure. If highly
unrelaxed, merging clusters are common at high redshift, they could create a
bias in some samples as the morphological complexity of mergers may cause them
to fall below the flux limit of surveys that assume a unimodal spatial source
geometry. Conversely, the enhanced X-ray luminosity of mergers might cause them
to, temporarily, rise above the flux limit. Either effect could lead to
erroneous conclusions about the evolution of the comoving cluster space
density. A high fraction of morphologically complex clusters at high redshift
would also call into question the validity of cosmological studies that assume
that the systems under investigation are virialized.
