The long X-ray tail in Zwicky 8338

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of possibly the longest X-ray tail in the galaxy cluster Zwicky 8338, providing insights into galaxy-cluster interactions, gas stripping, and the properties of the intracluster medium.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed analysis of an exceptionally long X-ray tail in Zwicky 8338, highlighting its luminosity, temperature, and implications for gas stripping processes.

Findings

X-ray tail is extraordinarily luminous at 2×10^42 erg/s.

The tail's gas temperature is approximately 0.8 keV.

Gas mass fraction in the tail is estimated to be less than 0.1%.

Abstract

The interaction processes in galaxy clusters between the hot ionized gas (ICM) and the member galaxies are of crucial importance in order to understand the dynamics in galaxy clusters, the chemical enrichment processes and the validity of their hydrostatic mass estimates. Recently, several X-ray tails associated to gas which was partly stripped of galaxies have been discovered. Here we report on the X-ray tail in the 3 keV galaxy cluster Zwicky 8338, which might be the longest ever observed. We derive the properties of the galaxy cluster environment and give hints on the substructure present in this X-ray tail, which is very likely associated to the galaxy CGCG254-021. The X-ray tail is extraordinarily luminous ($2\times10^{42}$ erg/s), the thermal emission has a temperature of 0.8 keV and the X-ray luminous gas might be stripped off completely from the galaxy. From the assumptions on the 3D geometry we estimate the gas mass fraction (< 0.1%) and conclude that the gas has been compressed and/or heated.