NuSTAR Observations of Galaxy Clusters
Abstract
Efforts to characterize the hard (>10 keV) X-ray emission from galaxy clusters have historically been hampered by a lack of observatories with imaging capabilities. As the first orbiting observatory with mirrors able to focus >10 keV X-rays, NuSTAR makes possible the most sensitive searches yet for inverse Compton emission associated with radio halos and relics and for tight constraints on the temperatures of shocked regions. I will present highlights from the galaxy clusters so far observed by NuSTAR including the Bullet Cluster, the Coma Cluster, the Cygnus A Cluster, and Abell 2256. In particular, I will spotlight a Bullet Cluster temperature map derived from joint spectral fits to ~414 ks of Chandra and 266 ks of NuSTAR data, the latter of which constrains the temperatures of the hottest (~20 keV) shocked gas in the cluster, and discuss its implications on the thermalization and dynamical state of the intracluster medium.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #225
- Pub Date:
- January 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015AAS...22530406W