An RXTE study of M87 and the core of the Virgo cluster

Details An RXTE study of M87 and the core of the Virgo cluster An RXTE study of M87 and the core of the Virgo cluster

1998-12-02

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9812031v3

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

8 pages, 2 postscript figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

Scientific paper

We present hard X-ray observations of the nearby radio galaxy M87 and the core of the Virgo cluster using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. These are the first hard X-ray observations of M87 not affected by contamination from the nearby Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC4388. Thermal emission from Virgo's intracluster medium is clearly detected and has a spectrum indicative of kT=2.5keV plasma with approximately 25% cosmic abundances. No non-thermal (power-law) emission from M87 is detected in the hard X-ray band, with fluctuations in the Cosmic X-ray Background being the limiting factor. Combining with ROSAT data, we infer that the X-ray spectrum of the M87 core and jet must be steep (Gamma_core>1.90$ and Gamma_jet>1.75), and we discuss the implications of this result. In particular, these results are consistent with M87 being a mis-aligned BL-Lac object.

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