A Sharper Picture of X-ray Bright Galaxy Groups: Chandra Imaging and Spectroscopy of HCG 62 and NGC 741

Groups and poor clusters are the locus of most galaxies in the present-day Universe and the building blocks from which clusters form. They accordingly occupy a significant place in the continuum of structure between isolated galaxies and rich clusters. Owing to the lower temperature of their intracluster gas, X-ray emission from groups produces strong lines from a broader range of elements than do hotter clusters. Here, we employ Chandra images of the X-ray bright groups HCG 62 and NGC 741 to determine spatial variations of abundance and temperature, study the origin and enrichment of intragroup gas, and examine the interactions between gas and radio sources. Of particular note are the two X-ray "cavities" in HCG 62. With extents of about 10 kpc and nearly symmetrically placed on opposite sides of the X-ray peak, these cavities most likely result from interaction between relativistic plasma produced by a recently-active nucleus in the central elliptical galaxy and the intragroup gas. This observation extends to groups the phenomenon of X-ray cavities found in Chandra data of a number of clusters. This work was supported in part by NASA grants GO0-1037X and GO1-2138X and contract NAS8-39073.