How Abundant is Iron in the Core of the Perseus Cluster?

Details How Abundant is Iron in the Core of the Perseus Cluster? How Abundant is Iron in the Core of the Perseus Cluster?

1998-02-05

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9802067v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

19 pages, 3 Postscript figures

Scientific paper

10.1086/305685

The analysis of Perseus data collected with the Medium Energy Concentrator Spectrometer (MECS) on board Beppo-SAX shows that the ratio of the flux of the 8 keV line complex (dominated by Fe K$_{\beta}$ emission) over the 6.8 keV line complex (dominated by Fe K$_{\alpha}$ emission) is significantly larger than predicted by standard thermal emission codes. Moreover the analysis of spatially resolved spectra shows that the above ratio decreases with increasing cluster radius. We find that, amongst the various explanations we consider, the most likely requires the plasma to be optically thick for resonant scattering at the energy of the Fe K$_{\alpha}$ line. We argue that if this is the case, then measures of the iron abundance made using standard thermal emission codes, that assume optically thin emission, can significantly underestimate the true iron abundance. In the case of the core of Perseus we estimate the true abundance to be $\sim$ 0.9 solar in a circular region with radius of $\sim 60$ kpc and centered on NGC 1275. Finally we speculate that similar results may hold for the core of other rich clusters.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

How Abundant is Iron in the Core of the Perseus Cluster? does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with How Abundant is Iron in the Core of the Perseus Cluster?, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and How Abundant is Iron in the Core of the Perseus Cluster? will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-252990