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Zooming in on the Coma Cluster with Chandra: Compressed Warm Gas in the Brightest Cluster Galaxies

A. Vikhlinin·M. Markevitch·W. Forman·C. Jones
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Abstract

The Chandra image of the central region of the Coma cluster reveals that both its dominant galaxies, NGC4874 and NGC4889, 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 10^8 M_sun 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.

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A. Vikhlinin, M. Markevitch, W. Forman, C. Jones. 2001-06-12. Zooming in on the Coma Cluster with Chandra: Compressed Warm Gas in the Brightest Cluster Galaxies. https://doi.org/10.1086/323181

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