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Physical Sciences: X-rays from the Coma Cluster of Galaxies

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Abstract

THE Coma cluster of galaxies is usually considered to contain insufficient matter in the form of galaxies to be gravitationally bound, but the high degree of symmetry of the cluster, and the presumed age of its galaxies, suggest that the cluster is, in fact, gravitationally bound. It is possible that the missing mass takes the form of ionized intracluster gas, and Woolf1 has used radio, visible light and X-ray observations to set upper limits for the amount of such matter and, more recently, Turnrose and Rood2 have discussed the problems of heating and supporting such a gas against gravitational collapse. We present here new observational evidence of X-ray emission which limits the amount of hot intracluster gas to less than 2 % of that required for gravitational binding.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. E. O. Hulburt Center for Space Research, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, 20390

    JOHN F. MEEKINS, GILBERT FRITZ, TALBOT A. CHUBB & H. FRIEDMAN

  2. E. O. Hulburt Center for Space Research,

    RICHARD C. HENRY

  3. The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 21218

    RICHARD C. HENRY

Authors
  1. JOHN F. MEEKINS
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  2. GILBERT FRITZ
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  3. TALBOT A. CHUBB
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  4. H. FRIEDMAN
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  5. RICHARD C. HENRY
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MEEKINS, J., FRITZ, G., CHUBB, T. et al. Physical Sciences: X-rays from the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. Nature 231, 107–108 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/231107a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/231107a0

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