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Imagine the Universe News - 25 March 2011
Suzaku Shows Clearest Picture Yet of Perseus Cluster
Suzaku's observations across two swaths
of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster. Data from a combined exposure of 3 days
are shown in two false-color strips. Bluer colors indicate less intense X-ray emission. The dashed circle is 11.6 million light-years across and marks the so-called virial radius, where cold gas is now entering the cluster. Red circles indicate X-ray sources not associated with the cluster. Inset: An image of the cluster's bright central region taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown to scale). Credits: NASA/ISAS/DSS/A. Simionescu et al.; inset: NASA/CXC/A. Fabian et al.
Unlabeled image
X-ray observations made by the Suzaku observatory provide the clearest picture
to date of the size, mass and chemical content of a nearby cluster of galaxies. The study also provides
the first direct evidence for clumping of the million-degree gas
clouds in the cluster's outskirts.
Suzaku was built by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
with contributions from NASA and participation by the international
scientific community. The findings appeared in the March 25, 2011
issue of the journal Science.
Galaxy clusters are millions of light-years across, and most of their normal matter exists in the form of hot X-ray-emitting gas that fills the space between the galaxies. "Understanding the content of normal matter in galaxy clusters is a key element for using these objects to study the evolution of the universe," explained Adam Mantz, a co-author of the paper at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Clusters provide critical constraints on cosmological parameters which
describe the nature of the universe. These constraints are
independent of measurements made from type Ia supernovae, galaxy
surveys, and the cosmic
microwave background. Overall, the independent methods show good
agreement. Previously, however, in one particular aspect, they did
not. NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) explored the cosmic microwave background and established that baryons -- what physicists call normal matter -- make up only about 4.6 percent of the universe. Yet previous studies showed that galaxy clusters seemed to hold even fewer baryons than this amount. Suzaku images of faint gas at the fringes of a nearby galaxy cluster have allowed astronomers to resolve this discrepancy for the first time. This Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 1275, the galaxy located in the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster. The red threadlike filaments are composed of cool gas suspended by a magnetic field. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
The satellite's ideal target for this study was the Perseus Galaxy Cluster, which is located about 250 million light-years away and named for the constellation in which it resides. It is the brightest extended X-ray source beyond our own galaxy, and also the brightest and closest cluster in which Suzaku has attempted to map outlying gas.
"Before Suzaku, our knowledge of the properties of this gas was limited to the innermost parts of clusters, where the X-ray emission is brightest, but this left a huge volume essentially unexplored," said Aurora Simionescu, the study's lead researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University.
In late 2009, Suzaku's X-ray telescopes repeatedly observed the cluster by progressively imaging areas farther east and northwest of the center. Each set of images probed sky regions two degrees across -- equivalent to four times the apparent width of the full moon or about 9 million light-years at the cluster's distance. Staring at the cluster for about three days, the satellite mapped X-rays with energies hundreds of times greater than that of visible light.
From the data, taken between 0.7 - 7.0 keV, researchers measured the density and temperature of the faint X-ray gas, which let them infer many other important quantities. One is the so-called virial radius, which essentially marks the edge of the cluster. Based on this measurement, the cluster is 11.6 million light-years across and contains more than 660 trillion times the mass of the sun. That's nearly a thousand times the mass of our Milky Way galaxy.
The researchers also determined the ratio of the cluster's gas mass to its total mass, including dark matter -- the mysterious substance that makes up about 23 percent of the universe, according to WMAP. By virtue of their enormous size, galaxy clusters should contain a representative sample of cosmic matter, with normal-to-dark-matter ratios similar to WMAP's. Yet the outer parts of the Perseus cluster seemed to contain too many baryons, the opposite of earlier studies, but still in conflict with WMAP.
To solve the problem, researchers had to understand the
distribution of hot gas in the cluster, the researchers say. In the
central regions, the gas is distributed relatively smoothly. But computer simulations show that fresh infalling gas at the cluster edge tends to form irregular clumps. Not accounting for the clumping leads to overestimates for the density of the gas. This is what led to the apparent disagreement with the fraction of normal matter found in the cosmic microwave background.
"The distribution of these clumps and the fact that they are not immediately destroyed as they enter the cluster are important clues in understanding the physical processes that take place in these previously unexplored regions," said Steve Allen at KIPAC, the principal investigator of the Suzaku observations.
"Six years into its mission, Suzaku continues to provide important
observations that no other satellite can deliver," said Robert Petre,
who heads the X-ray Astrophysics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center.
Goddard supplied Suzaku's X-ray telescopes and data-processing software, and it continues to operate a facility that supports U.S. astronomers who use the spacecraft.
Suzaku (Japanese for "red bird of the south") is the fifth Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite. It was launched as Astro-E2 on July 10, 2005, and renamed in orbit. The observatory was developed at JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in collaboration with NASA and other Japanese and U.S. institutions. A service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/GSFC
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