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abstract
Although cooling flows make the centers of rich clusters inherently interesting, most of a cluster's gas mass is found at large radii. Moreover, this gas may still be infalling and may not be in equilibrium. Therefore, a study of this extended gas through its X-ray emission may provide answers to such problems as the total mass distribution of a cluster, the relationship between clusters and superclusters, and the interaction between the cluster gas and its member galaxies.
Four pointed observations were made of the Centaurus cluster using the ROSAT PSPC. Each observation is located 50 arcmin (0.94 Mpc at Ho=50 km/s/Mpc) from the cluster center (NGC 4696), and the observations are spaced evenly in azimuth. Integration times vary between 14 and 20 ksec which allow the detection of the extended cluster emission at large radii. We have detected cluster X-ray emission out to at least 50 arcmin, and perhaps to the edge of each offset field. A mosaic of these images will be presented.
