Metallicity of the Fossil Group NGC 1550 Observed with Suzaku

TL;DR

This study uses Suzaku observations to analyze the distribution of metals in the intra-cluster medium of the fossil galaxy group NGC 1550, revealing extended metal enrichment and element abundance patterns similar to other groups.

Contribution

First measurement of O and Mg abundances in the ICM of a fossil group extending to 0.5 r_180, with analysis of metal gradients and supernova enrichment ratios.

Findings

Metals extend to large radii in the ICM.

Abundance ratios of alpha-elements to Fe are similar to other groups.

The supernova ratio and metal mass-to-light ratios are consistent with other galaxy groups.

Abstract

We studied the temperature and metal abundance distributions of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) in a group of galaxies NGC 1550 observed with Suzaku. The NGC 1550 is classified as a fossil group, which have few bright member galaxies except for the central galaxy. Thus, such a type of galaxy is important to investigate how the metals are enriched to the ICM. With the Suzaku XIS instruments, we directly measured not only Si, S, and Fe lines but also O and Mg lines and obtained those abundances to an outer region of ~0.5 r_180 for the first time, and confirmed that the metals in the ICM of such a fossil group are indeed extending to a large radius. We found steeper gradients for Mg, Si, S, and Fe abundances, while O showed almost flat abundance distribution. Abundance ratios of alpha-elements to Fe were similar to those of the other groups and poor clusters. We calculated the number ratio of type II to type Ia supernovae for the ICM enrichment to be 2.9 +- 0.5 within 0.1 r_180, and the value was consistent with those for the other groups and poor clusters observed with Suzaku. We also calculated metal mass-to-light ratios (MLRs) for Fe, O and Mg with B-band and K-band luminosities of the member galaxies of NGC 1550. The derived MLRs were comparable to those of NGC 5044 group in the r<0.1 r_180 region, while those of NGC 1550 are slightly higher than those of NGC 5044 in the outer region.