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

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  • 28 February 2001
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 the 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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