Zooming in on the Coma Cluster with Chandra: Compressed Warm Gas in the Brightest Cluster Galaxies
Abstract
The Chandra image of the central region of the Coma Cluster reveals that both its dominant galaxies, NGC 4874 and NGC 4889, retain the central parts of their X-ray gas coronae. The interstellar gas with a temperature of 1-2 keV is confined by the hot intergalactic medium of the Coma Cluster into compact clouds (only 3 kpc in radius) containing 108 Msolar of gas. The physical state of the gas in these clouds appears to be determined by a delicate balance between radiative cooling and suppressed (by a factor of 30-100) heat conduction through the interface between these clouds and the hot cluster gas.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- July 2001
- DOI:
- 10.1086/323181
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0102483
- Bibcode:
- 2001ApJ...555L..87V
- Keywords:
-
- Galaxies: Clusters: General;
- Galaxies: Clusters: Individual: Name: Coma;
- Galaxies: Individual: NGC Number: NGC 4874;
- Galaxies: Individual: NGC Number: NGC 4889;
- Magnetic Fields;
- X-Rays: Galaxies;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Accepted to ApJ Letters. 4 pages, 4 figures, uses emulateapj5. Several typos in the original version are fixed