Zooming in on the coma cluster with Chandra: Compressed warm gas in the brightest cluster galaxies

The Chandra image of the central region of the Coma Cluster reveals that bo th its dominant galaxies, NGC 4874 and NGC 4889, retain the central parts o f their X-ray gas coronae. The interstellar gas with a temperature of 1-2 k eV is confined by the hot intergalactic medium of the Coma Cluster into com pact clouds (only 3 kpc in radius) containing 10(8) M. of gas. The physical state of the gas in these clouds appears to be determined by a delicate ba lance between radiative cooling and suppressed (by a factor of 30-100) heat conduction through the interface between these clouds and the hot cluster gas.