Cooling flows in clusters of galaxies

Details Cooling flows in clusters of galaxies Cooling flows in clusters of galaxies

Apr 1991

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1991a%26arv...2..191f&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics Review (ISSN 0935-4956), vol. 2, April 1991, p. 191-226.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

179

Cooling Flows (Astrophysics), Galactic Clusters, X Ray Astronomy, Astronomical Spectroscopy, Dark Matter, Interstellar Gas, Mass Distribution, Molecular Clouds, Star Formation

Scientific paper

X-ray images and spectra of clusters of galaxies show strong evidence for cooling flows. In many clusters, the hot gas in the core is cooling at rates of about 100 solar masses/yr and greater. Few traces of the cooled gas have been observed, but it probably forms into low-mass stars (perhaps brown dwarf or even Jupiter-mass objects). X-ray surface-brightness profiles show that the cooling gas is highly inhomogeneous. Overdense gas cools rapidly to form cooled clumps distributed throughout the flow, with little of the gas ever reaching the cluster center. Cooled and cooling clumps are disrupted because of their motion relative to the remainder of the gas, tending to produce small cooled fragments and, ultimately, low-mass stars. Large molecular clouds, which are the sites of massive star formation in the Galaxy, do not occur in the outer parts of cooling flows. There is evidence of larger gas clumps and the formation of more massive stars in the central few kpc of some cooling flows. It is argued that cooling flows efficiently form dark matter. This has wider implications for the formation of dark matter in massive galaxies.

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