GAS SLOSHING AND RADIO GALAXY DYNAMICS IN THE CORE OF THE 3C 449 GROUP

Journal Article · Sun Feb 10 00:00:00 EST 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/764/1/83· OSTI ID:22167775

Lal, Dharam V.; Kraft, Ralph P.; Randall, Scott W.; Forman, William R.; Nulsen, Paul E. J.; Jones, Christine ^[1]; Roediger, Elke ^[2]; ZuHone, John A. ^[3]; Hardcastle, Martin J. ^[4]; Croston, Judith H. ^[5]

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1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
2. Jacobs University Bremen, P.O. Box 750 561, D-28725 Bremen (Germany)
3. NASA-GSFC, 8800 Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
4. University of Hertfordshire. School of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, Hatfield AL 10 9AB (United Kingdom)
5. University of Southampton, School of Physics and Astronomy, Southampton, SO17 1SJ (United Kingdom)

We present results from a 140 ks Chandra/ACIS-S observation of the hot gas around the canonical FR I radio galaxy 3C 449. An earlier, shorter 30 ks Chandra observation of the group gas showed an unusual entropy distribution and a surface brightness edge in the gas that could be a strong shock around the inner radio lobes. In our deeper data we find no evidence for a temperature increase inside of the brightness edge, but a temperature decrease across part of the edge. This suggests that the edge is a 'sloshing' cold front due to a merger within the last {approx}<1.3-1.6 Gyr. Both the northern and southern inner jets are bent slightly to the west in projection as they enter their respective lobes, suggesting that the sloshing core is moving to the east. The straight inner jet flares at approximately the position where it crosses the contact edge, suggesting that the jet is entraining and thermalizing some of the hot gas as it crosses the edge. We also detect filaments of X-ray emission around the southern inner radio jet and lobe which we attribute to low entropy entrained gas. The lobe flaring and gas entrainment were originally predicted in simulations of Loken et al. and are confirmed in our deep observation.

• OSTI ID: 22167775
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 764, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
APPROXIMATIONS
BRIGHTNESS
DISTRIBUTION
EMISSION
ENTROPY
HYDRODYNAMICS
RADIO GALAXIES
SIMULATION
SURFACES
X RADIATION
X-RAY GALAXIES