X-Ray Evidence for Multiphase Hot Gas with Solar Abundances in the Brightest Elliptical Galaxies

The temperature and abundance structure in the intracluster medium (ICM) of the Hydra-A cluster of galaxies is studied with ASCA and ROSAT. The effect of the large extended outskirts in the point-spread function of the X-Ray Telescope on ASCA is included in this analysis. In the X-ray brightness profile, the strong central excess above a single beta-model, identified in the Einstein and ROSAT data, is also found in the harder energy band (>4keV). A simultaneous fit of five an...

We report the detection of hard X-ray emission components in the spectra of six nearby, giant elliptical galaxies observed with the ASCA satellite. The systems studied, which exhibit strong dynamical evidence for supermassive black holes in their nuclei, are M87, NGC 1399 and NGC 4696 (the dominant galaxies of the Virgo, Fornax and Centaurus clusters, respectively) and NGC 4472, 4636 and 4649 (three further giant ellipticals in the Virgo cluster). The ASCA data for all six so...

We investigate the cold and warm gas content, kinematics, and spatial distribution of six local massive elliptical galaxies to probe the origin of the multiphase gas in their atmospheres. We report new observations, including SOFIA [CII], ALMA CO, MUSE H$\alpha$+[NII] and VLA radio observations. These are complemented by a large suite of multiwavelength archival datasets, including thermodynamical properties of the hot gas and radio jets, which are leveraged to investigate th...

We describe two-dimensional gasdynamical computations of the X-ray emitting gas in the rotating elliptical galaxy NGC 4649 that indicate an inflow of about one solar mass per year at every radius. Such a large instantaneous inflow cannot have persisted over a Hubble time. The central constant-entropy temperature peak recently observed in the innermost 150 parsecs is explained by compressive heating as gas flows toward the central massive black hole. Since the cooling time of ...

Some early-type galaxies show OVI emission, a tracer of gas at 10^5.5 K, and a predicted product of gas cooling from the X-ray emitting temperatures. We studied the spatial extent and velocity structure of this cooling gas by obtaining spectra of the OVI doublet in NGC 4636 and NGC 5846 with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer. For NGC 4636, the central LWRS pointing shows that the OVI lines are double-peaked and symmetrical about the systemic velocity of the galaxy, w...

We present an analysis of the hot interstellar medium (ISM) in the spiral galaxy NGC 4490, which is interacting with the irregular galaxy NGC 4485, using ~100ks of Chandra ACIS-S observations. The high angular resolution of Chandra enables us to remove discrete sources and perform spatially resolved spectroscopy for the star forming regions and associated outflows, allowing us to look at how the physical properties of the hot ISM such as temperature, hydrogen column density a...

NGC 4449 is an irregular galaxy with a moderately high star formation activity. The massive stars in NGC 4449 have given rise to many bright HII regions, superbubbles, supergiant shells, and "chimney-like" radial filaments. ROSAT X-ray observations of NGC 4449 have revealed four point-like sources and a wide-spread diffuse emission. The spectral properties of the diffuse component suggest that the emission originates from hot interstellar gas. We have compared deep ground-bas...

A simple spherically-symmetric, steady-state, cooling-flow description with gas loss (following Sarazin \& Ashe 1989), within galaxy models constrained by radially extended stellar dynamical data, is shown to provide generally reasonable fits to the existing data on X-ray emission profiles and temperatures for a set of bright elliptical galaxies in Virgo and Fornax. Three free parameters are needed to specify the model: the external mass flux, the external pressure, and a dim...

We have analyzed the ASCA SIS and GIS data for seventeen groups and determined the average temperature and abundance of the hot x-ray emitting gas. For groups with gas temperatures less than 1.5 keV we find that the abundance is correlated with the gas temperature and luminosity. We have also determined the abundance of the alpha-elements and iron independently for those groups with sufficient counts. We find that for the cool groups (i.e. kT <1.5 keV) the ratio of alpha-elem...

We present a new chemical evolution model meant to be a first step in the self-consistent study of both optical and X-ray properties of elliptical galaxies. Detailed cooling and heating processes in the interstellar medium are taken into account using a mono-phase one-zone treatment which allows a more reliable modelling of the galactic wind regime with respect to previous work. The model successfully reproduces simultaneously the mass-metallicity, colour-magnitude, the L_X -...