Precessing jets from a moving source and bright X-ray filaments in galaxy clusters

¹ Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, MS-83, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: mario@head.cfa.harvard.edu
² Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Apartado Postal 70–248, CP 04510, México D.F., México e-mail: binette@astroscu.unam.mx
³ Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Ciudad Universitaria, Apartado Postal 70-543, CP 04510, México D.F., México e-mail: [pablo,raga]@nucleares.unam.mx

Received: 7 May 2005
Accepted: 3 October 2005

Abstract

We present hydrodynamical calculations carried out with the 3D yguazú-a code for a precessing jet model that is interacting with a plane parallel wind. This scenario describes an extragalactic jet in which the jet source is in motion with respect to the surrounding intra-cluster medium. From the numerical results, synthetic emission maps and spectra in X-ray band were obtained. We compare these predictions with observations of the radio jets emanating from the radio-galaxy 4C 26.42 (in the Abell 1795 galaxy cluster). We find that the general morphology of the radio jets can be described by a point-symmetric precessing jet system interacting with a plane parallel wind (i.e., the intra-cluster medium flowing past the galaxy). We also find that our synthetic X-ray emission maps reproduce the observed large scale structures (with sizes on the order of tens of kpc).