Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-06-29
Astrophys.J. 614 (2004) 692-697
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
17 pages, 7 figures, to be published in ApJ. When this paper was being refereed, Eric Hallman and Maxim Markevitch carried out
Scientific paper
10.1086/423925
We present Chandra X-ray observations of galaxy cluster A168 (z=0.045). Two X-ray peaks with a projected distance of 676 kpc are found to be located close to two dominant galaxies, respectively. Both peaks are significantly offset from the peak of the number density distribution of galaxies. This suggests that A168 consists of two subclusters, a northern subcluster (A168N) and a southern subcluster (A168S). Further X-ray imaging analysis reveals that (1) the X-ray isophotes surrounding the two X-ray peaks are heavily distorted, (2) an elongated and ontinuous filament connects the two X-ray peaks. These suggest that strong interactions have occurred between the two subclusters. Spectral analysis shows that A168 has a mean temperature of 2.53 +/- 0.09 keV and a mean metallicity of 0.31 +/- 0.04 Z_{solar}. The metallicity is roughly a constant across the cluster but the temperature shows some systematic variations. Most X-ray, optical and radio properties of A168 are consistent with it being an off-axis merger several Gyrs after a core passage, although detailed numerical simulations are required to see whether the observed properties, in particular the significant offset between the optical and X-ray centers, can be reproduced in such a scenario.
Chen Jiansheng
Huo Zhiying
Ma Jun
Mao Shude
Xue Suijian
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