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E. O'Sullivan, J. Vrtilek (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), A. M. Read (University of Birmingham, UK)
We present an XMM-Newton observation of the X-ray bright galaxy group/poor cluster MKW 4. This system shows little sign of recent interactions, having an evenly distributed and morphologically segregated galaxy population. In the X-ray, we find that the inner halo is not well described by a modified King model, showing structure along a NW-SE axis. We do not find evidence of sharp fronts or shocks in the gas, nor do we see signs of AGN activity, past or present. The deprojected temperature profile shows a drop in temperature from ~3 keV at 100 kpc (where we estimate the cooling time to be ~15 Gyr) to 1.3 keV in the core. However, spectral fits are not consistent with significant quantities of gas cooling far below this point. Abundance profiles show a strong increase in metals within the central galaxy NGC 4073, as expected from enrichment by SNIa. We conclude that MKW 4 is a fairly relaxed system in which either a developing cooling flow is being suppressed by some means, or the central galaxy has maintained a halo of cool gas through stellar mass loss.
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,
35#2
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.