We present Chandra ACIS-I and ACIS-S observations ($sim$200 ks in total) of the X-ray luminous elliptical galaxy NGC 4636, located in the outskirts of the Virgo cluster. A soft band (0.5-2 keV) image shows the presence of a bright core in the center
surrounded by an extended X-ray corona and two pronounced quasi-symmetric, 8 kpc long, arm-like features. Each of this features defines the rimof an ellipsoidal bubble. An additional bubble-like feature, whose northern rim is located $sim2$ kpc south of the north-eastern arm, is detected as well. We present surface brightness and temperature profiles across the rims of the bubbles, showing that their edges are sharp and characterized by temperature jumps of about 20-25%. Through a comparison of the observed profiles with theoretical shock models, we demonstrate that a scenario where the bubbles were produced by shocks, probably driven by energy deposited off-center by jets, is the most viable explanation to the X-ray morphology observed in the central part of NGC 4636.
We present the analysis of the temperature and metallicity profiles of 12 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.1--0.3 selected from the Chandra archive with at least ~20,000 net ACIS counts and kT>6 keV. We divide the sample between 7 Cooling-Core
(CC) and 5 Non-Cooling-Core (NCC) clusters according to their central cooling time. We find that single power-laws can describe properly both the temperature and metallicity profiles at radii larger than 0.1 r_180 in both CC and NCC systems, showing the NCC objects steeper profiles outwards. A significant deviation is only present in the inner 0.1 r_180. We perform a comparison of our sample with the De Grandi & Molendi BeppoSAX sample of local CC and NCC clusters, finding a complete agreement in the CC cluster profile and a marginally higher value (at ~1sigma) in the inner regions of the NCC clusters. The slope of the power-law describing kT(r) within 0.1 r_180 correlates strongly with the ratio between the cooling time and the age of the Universe at the cluster redshift, being the slope >0 and tau_c/tau_age<=0.6 in CC systems.
