South-West extension of the hard X-ray emission from the Coma cluster

Aims:We explore the morphology of hard (18-30 keV) X-ray emission from the Coma cluster of galaxies.
Methods: We analyse a deep (1.1 Ms) observation of the Coma cluster with the ISGRI imager on board the INTEGRAL satellite.
Results: We show that the source extension in the North-East to South-West (SW) direction ( 17^prime) significantly exceeds the size of the point spread function of ISGRI, and that the centroid of the image of the source in the 18-30 keV band is displaced in the SW direction compared to the centroid in the 1-10 keV band. To test the nature of the SW extension we fit the data assuming different models of source morphology. The best fit is achieved with a diffuse source of elliptical shape, although an acceptable fit can be achieved assuming an additional point source SW of the cluster core. In the case of an elliptical source, the direction of extension of the source coincides with the direction toward the subcluster falling onto the Coma cluster. If the SW excess is due to the presence of a point source with a hard spectrum, we show that there is no obvious X-ray counterpart for this additional source, and that the closest X-ray source is the quasar EXO 1256+281, which is located 6.1^prime from the centroid of the excess.
Conclusions: The observed morphology of the hard X-ray emission clarifies the nature of the hard X-ray “excess” emission from the Coma cluster, which is due to the presence of an extended hard X-ray source SW of the cluster core.