ROSAT Observations of the Galactic Wind in M82

Strickland, Dave; Ponman, Trevor; Stevens, Ian

ROSAT Observations of the Galactic Wind in M82

Authors

Strickland, Dave

Ponman, Trevor

Stevens, Ian

Description

We present {\em ROSAT} PSPC and HRI observations of the galactic wind from the starburst galaxy M82. \mbox{X-ray} emission from the wind is detected to a distance of $\sim6\kpc$ from the plane of the galaxy. Making use of the PSPC's mixture of good spatial and spectral characteristics, we separate point source and diffuse emission, and investigate the spectral variation of the diffuse emission through the wind. The intrinsic X-ray luminosity of the wind in the 0.1-2.4\keV\ band is found to be approximately $1.9\times10^{40}$\ergps outside the immediate vicinity of the nucleus. The temperature of the diffuse emission is found to decrease weakly from $\sim0.6\keV$ to $\sim0.4\keV$ along the minor axis, whilst the inferred gas density drops as $z^{-0.5}$ and $z^{-0.8}$ along the northern and southern minor axes respectively. We compare these results with those expected from two simple models for the emission: Chevalier \& Clegg's adiabatically expanding free wind and emission from shocked clouds in a wind, and find that the emission cannot come from a free wind, but that shock heated clouds could be the source of the emission.
Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. Latex, 23 pages with 12 (of 14) postscript figures. The full paper with all the figures is available at http://www.sr.bham.ac.uk/~dks/M82/m82.html