Deconvolution of ASCA X-ray data - II. Radial temperature and metallicity profiles for 106 galaxy clusters

Abstract

In Paper I we presented a methodology to recover the spatial variations of properties of the intracluster gas from ASCA X-ray satellite observations of galaxy clusters. We verified the correctness of this procedure by applying it to simulated cluster data sets that we had subjected to the various contaminants common in ASCA data. In this paper we present the results that we obtain when we apply this method to real galaxy cluster observations. We determine broad-band temperature and cooling-flow mass-deposition rates for the 106 clusters in our sample, and obtain temperature, abundance and emissivity profiles (i.e., at least two annular bins) for 98 of these clusters. We find that 90 per cent of these temperature profiles are consistent with isothermality at the 3σ confidence level. This conflicts: with the prevalence of steeply declining cluster temperature profiles found by Markevitch et al. from a sample of 30 clusters.