Related papers: Heating and cooling in the Perseus cluster core
The gas in the cores of many clusters and groups of galaxies has a short radiative cooling time. Energy from the central black hole is observed to flow into this gas by means of jets, bubbles and sound waves. Cooling is thus offset by…
The gas temperature in the cores of many clusters of galaxies drops inward by about a factor of three or more within the central 100kpc radius. The radiative cooling time drops over the same region from 5 or more Gyr down to about 10^8 yr.…
The X-ray emission in many clusters of galaxies shows a central peak in surface brightness coincident with a drop in temperature. These characterize a cooling flow. There is often a radio source also at the centre of such regions. Data from…
The gas temperature in the cores of many clusters of galaxies drops inward by about a factor of three or more within the central 100 kpc radius. The radiative cooling time drops over the same region from 5 or more Gyr down to below a few…
Observations of gravitational lensing indicate that the mass distribution in clusters of galaxies (where most of the mass is dark matter) is highly peaked towards the center, while X-ray observations imply that the gas is more extended. The…
The radiative cooling time of the hot gas at the centres of cool cores in clusters of galaxies drops down to 10 million years and below. The observed mass cooling rate of such gas is very low, suggesting that AGN feedback is very tightly…
We present temperature and metallicity maps of the Perseus cluster core obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. We find an overall temperature rise from ~3.0 keV in the core to ~5.5 keV at 120 kpc and a metallicity profile that rises…
We propose a scenario in which a large fraction, or even most, of the gas cooling to low temperatures of T<10^4 K in cooling flow clusters, directly gains energy from the central black hole. Most of the cool gas is accelerated to…
We make a further study of the very deep Chandra observation of the X-ray brightest galaxy cluster, A426 in Perseus. We examine the radial distribution of energy flux inferred by the quasi-concentric ripples in surface brightness, assuming…
Two lines of evidence indicate that active galaxies, principally radio galaxies, have heated the diffuse hot gas in clusters. The first is the general need for additional heating to explain the steepness of the X-ray luminosity--temperature…
We present preliminary results of the XMM-Newton 50 ksec observation of the Perseus cluster. The global east/west asymmetry of the gas temperature and surface brightness distributions, approximately aligned with the chain of bright…
Recent X-ray and optical observations of the Perseus cluster indicate that the viscous and conductive dissipation of sound waves is the mechanism responsible for heating the intracluster medium and thus balancing radiative cooling of…
The hot, X-ray-emitting intracluster medium (ICM) is the dominant baryonic constituent of clusters of galaxies. In the cores of many clusters, radiative energy losses from the ICM occur on timescales significantly shorter than the age of…
The radiative cooling time of the X-ray-emitting plasma near the center in many clusters of galaxies is shorter than the age of the cluster, but neither the expected large drop in central temperature --nor the expected mass flow towards the…
We present an analysis of the temperature structure of the Perseus cluster atmosphere using XRISM Resolve observations. The average temperature rises from 3.3 keV near the nucleus of NGC 1275 to 8 keV at 10 arcmin (210 kpc), which is…
We present an analysis of 20 galaxy clusters observed with the Chandra X-ray satellite, focussing on the temperature structure of the intracluster medium and the cooling time of the gas. Our sample is drawn from a flux-limited catalogue but…
We review the X-ray spectra of the cores of clusters of galaxies. Recent high resolution X-ray spectroscopic observations have demonstrated a severe deficit of emission at the lowest X-ray temperatures as compared to that expected from…
We use a deep XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer observation to examine the X-ray emission from the core of the Centaurus cluster of galaxies. We clearly detect Fe-XVII emission at four separate wavelengths, indicating the presence…
The discovery of extended, approximately spherical weak shock waves in the hot intercluster gas in Perseus and Virgo has precipitated the notion that these waves may be the primary heating process that explains why so little gas cools to…
Early X-ray observations suggested that the intracluster medium cools and condenses at the centers of clusters, leading to a cooling flow of plasma in the cluster core. The increased incidence of emission-line nebulosity, excess blue light,…