High Resolution X-Ray Spectroscopy of The Gas Surrounding M87 and NGC1275: Emission Line Detection and Evidence for Radiatively Regulated Accretion

Abstract

The topic of this paper really falls somewhere between this session on active galaxies and the session on clusters. What I will report is really a cluster phenomenon but one which depends on the presence of a dominant, massive galaxy in the cluster. Specifically, we have detected several X-ray emission lines from the vicinity of M87 in the Virgo Cluster and NGC 1275 in Perseus. The lines are indicative of material which is cooler than the bulk of the intracluster gas. This material is most likely accreting onto the central galaxy with the accretion rate controlled by the rate of radiative cooling.The observations I am reporting were made with the Focal Plane Crystal Spectrometer (FPCS)on the Einstein Observatory. The instrument is a Bragg crystal spectrometer which has a resolving power (E/ΔE) of 50 to 500 over the energy range of 0.2 to 3 keV. It operates much like an optical scanner in that it has a narrow passband which is swept over some restricted spectral range containing an emission line. Detailed descriptions are given elsewhere (Canizares et al. 1977, 1979, Giacconi et al. 1979).