Confusion of Diffuse Objects in the X-ray Sky
Astrophysics
2009-10-31 v1
Abstract
Most of the baryons in the present-day universe are thought to reside in intergalactic space at temperatures of 10^5-10^7 K. X-ray emission from these baryons contributes a modest (~10%) fraction of the ~ 1 keV background whose prominence within the large-scale cosmic web depends on the amount of non-gravitational energy injected into intergalactic space by supernovae and AGNs. Here we show that the virialized regions of groups and clusters cover over a third of the sky, creating a source-confusion problem that may hinder X-ray searches for individual intercluster filaments and contaminate observations of distant groups.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0012191,
title = {Confusion of Diffuse Objects in the X-ray Sky},
author = {G. Mark Voit and August E. Evrard and Greg L. Bryan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0012191},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
accepted to ApJ Letters, 7 pages, 3 figures