No Arabic abstract
Identification of Abell 3120 as a galaxy cluster has recently been questioned with alternative suggestions including: a fossil remnant of a group merger, non-thermal emission from a radio galaxy, and projected emission from of a filamentary string of galaxies. We report on our analysis of the Chandra observation and evaluate these hypotheses based on our results. Abell 3120 shows X-ray emission extending 158 kpc, well beyond the central galaxy. The spatial distribution of X-rays in the core more closely follows the radio emission showing a jet-like structure extending to the north that is misaligned with the stellar light distribution of the central galaxy. At larger radii the X-ray emission is aligned with the SE-NW running axis of the galaxy distribution in the cluster core. Modeling the X-ray spectrum excludes purely non-thermal emission. The emission weighted temperature is 1.93 - 2.19 keV and the 0.3 - 10 keV luminosity is 1.23$times10^{43}$ ergs s$^{-1}$. Abell 3120 appears to be a poor cluster with Virgo and MKW 4 as peers. The best fitting model consists of a thermal component and a second component that may be either thermal or non-thermal, with luminosity 25% of the total X-ray luminosity. While, a more detailed spatial-spectral search failed to detect a central AGN, there is some evidence for an extended hard X-ray component. Cooler gas, 1.28 - 1.80 was detected in the central 20 kpc. The second thermal component marginally requires a higher redshift, >0.12, which may be due to a second cluster in the rich surrounding environment consisting of nearly a thousand catalogued galaxies.
We present X-ray observations of the northern outskirts of the relaxed galaxy cluster A1413 with Suzaku, whose XIS instrument has the low intrinsic background needed to make measurements of these low surface brightness regions. We excise 15 point sources superimposed on the image above a flux of $1times 10^{-14}$ fluxunit (2--10keV) using XMM-Newton and Suzaku images of the cluster. We quantify all known systematic errors as part of our analysis, and show our statistical errors encompasses them for the most part. Our results extend previous measurements with Chandra and XMM-Newton, and show a significant temperature drop to about 3keV at the virial radius, $r_{200}$. Our entropy profile in the outer region ($> 0.5 r_{200}$) joins smoothly onto that of XMM-Newton, and shows a flatter slope compared with simple models, similar to a few other clusters observed at the virial radius. The integrated mass of the cluster at the virial radius is approximately $7.5times10^{14}M_{odot}$ and varies by about 30% depending on the particular method used to measure it.
We present the results of Suzaku observation of the radio halo cluster Abell 2319. The metal abundance in the central cool region is found to be higher than the surrounding region, which was not resolved in the former studies. We confirm that the line-of-sight velocities of the intracluster medium in the observed region are consistent with those of the member galaxies of entire A2319 and A2319A subgroup for the first time, though any velocity difference within the region is not detected. On the other hand, we do not find any signs of gas motion relevant to A2319B subgroup. Hard X-ray emission from the cluster is clearly detected, but its spectrum is likely thermal. Assuming a simple single temperature model for the thermal component, we find that the upper limit of the non-thermal inverse Compton component becomes $2.6 times 10^{-11}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$ in the 10-40 keV band, which means that the lower limit of the magnetic field is 0.19 $mu$G with the radio spectral index 0.92. Although the results slightly depend on the detailed spectral modeling, it is robust that the upper limit of the power-law component flux and lower limit of the magnetic field strength become $sim 3 times 10^{-11}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$ and $sim 0.2 mu$G, respectively. Considering the lack of a significant amount of very hot ($sim 20$ keV) gas and the strong bulk flow motion, it is more likely that the relativistic non-thermal electrons responsible for the radio halo are accelerated through the intracluster turbulence rather than the shocks.
We present the analysis of a deep Chandra observation of a ~2L_* late-type galaxy, ESO 137-002, in the closest rich cluster A3627. The Chandra data reveal a long (>40 kpc) and narrow tail with a nearly constant width (~3 kpc) to the southeast of the galaxy, and a leading edge ~1.5 kpc from the galaxy center on the upstream side of the tail. The tail is most likely caused by the nearly edge-on stripping of ESO 137-002s ISM by ram pressure, compared to the nearly face-on stripping of ESO 137-001 discussed in our previous work. Spectral analysis of individual regions along the tail shows that the gas throughout it has a rather constant temperature, ~1 keV, very close to the temperature of the tails of ESO 137-001, if the same atomic database is used. The derived gas abundance is low (~0.2 solar with the single-kT model), an indication of the multiphase nature of the gas in the tail. The mass of the X-ray tail is only a small fraction (<5%) of the initial ISM mass of the galaxy, suggesting that the stripping is most likely at an early stage. However, with any of the single-kT, double-kT and multi-kT models we tried, the tail is always over-pressured relative to the surrounding ICM, which could be due to the uncertainties in the abundance, thermal vs. non-thermal X-ray emission, or magnetic support in the ICM. The H-alpha data from SOAR show a ~21 kpc tail spatially coincident with the X-ray tail, as well as a secondary tail (~12 kpc long) to the east of the main tail diverging at an angle of ~23 degrees and starting at a distance of ~7.5 kpc from the nucleus. At the position of the secondary H-alpha tail, the X-ray emission is also enhanced at the ~2 sigma level. We compare the tails of ESO 137-001 and ESO 137-002, and also compare the tails to simulations. Both the similarities and differences of the tails pose challenges to the simulations. Several implications are briefly discussed.
We present an X-ray spectral analysis of the nearby double radio relic merging cluster Abell 3376 ($z$ = 0.046), observed with the $Suzaku$ XIS instrument. These deep ($sim$360 ks) observations cover the entire double relic region in the outskirts of the cluster. These diffuse radio structures are amongst the largest and arc-shaped relics observed in combination with large-scale X-ray shocks in a merging cluster. We confirm the presence of a stronger shock (${cal M}_{rm{W}}$ = 2.8 $pm~0.4$) in the western direction at $rsim26$, derived from a temperature and surface brightness discontinuity across the radio relic. In the East, we detect a weaker shock (${cal M}_{rm{E}}$ = 1.5 $pm~0.1$) at $rsim8$, possibly associated to the notch of eastern relic, and a cold front at $rsim3$. Based on the shock speed calculated from the Mach numbers, we estimate that the dynamical age of the shock front is $sim$0.6 Gyr after core passage, indicating that Abell 3376 is still an evolving merging cluster and that the merger is taking place close to the plane of the sky. These results are consistent with simulations and optical and weak lensing studies from the literature.
We present results from Suzaku and Swift observations of the nearby radio galaxy 3C 33, and investigate the nature of absorption, reflection, and jet production in this source. We model the 0.5-100 keV nuclear continuum with a power law that is transmitted either through one or more layers of pc-scale neutral material, or through a modestly ionized pc-scale obscurer. The standard signatures of reflection from a neutral accretion disk are absent in 3C 33: there is no evidence of a relativistically blurred Fe K$alpha$ emission line, and no Compton reflection hump above 10 keV. We find the upper limit to the neutral reflection fraction is R<0.41 for an e-folding energy of 1 GeV. We observe a narrow, neutral Fe K$alpha$ line, which is likely to originate at least 2,000 R_s from the black hole. We show that the weakness of reflection features in 3C 33 is consistent with two interpretations: either the inner accretion flow is highly ionized, or the black-hole spin configuration is retrograde with respect to the accreting material.