8th HEAD Meeting, 8-11 September, 2004
Session 1 Galaxy Clusters and the Intergalactic Medium
Oral, Wednesday, September 8, 2004, 9:00-10:30am

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[1.05] Abundance drops in the centres of clusters of galaxies

J.S. Sanders, A.C. Fabian (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK)

X-ray observations of clusters of galaxies often show a central abundance peak. However recent observations of clusters by Chandra and XMM show several clusters where the abundance drops again in the very innermost region, leading to an off-centre peak (e.g. Centaurus, Abell 2199). A possible explanation for these drops is that the cores of these objects are optically thick in certain resonance emission lines. We present results obtained using a detailed new spectral model which takes account of the effect of scattering on several thousand resonance lines, and discuss whether resonance scattering is a likely explanation for the observed abundance drops.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.