AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 16 Example Constellation-X Science
Poster, Monday, 9:20am-7:00pm, January 9, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[16.04] Studying Cosmic Feedback with Constellation-X

B.R. McNamara (Ohio U.), M. Begelman (U. Colorado), M. Donahue, M. Voit (Michigan State)

X-ray observations of galaxies, groups, and clusters made with the Chandra observatory have shown that outbursts from active galactic nuclei (AGN) have a dramatic impact on the thermodynamic history of the hot gas in these systems. Releasing upward of 1061 erg into the intracluster medium, AGN-driven outflows can heat and redistribute the hot gas on scales of hundreds of kiloparsecs. They can regulate or quench so-called cooling flows, and perhaps supply the excess entropy (preheating) in groups and clusters. The history of AGN feedback can be traced over cosmic time using measurements of giant cavity systems in the hot gas, and by probing the entropy of the hot gas in distant clusters. We evaluate the ability of Constellation-X to study clusters beyond redshift 1, and to trace the history of feedback over the ages of clusters.

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