On the internal absorption of galaxy clusters

A study of the cores of galaxy clusters with the Einstein Solid State Spectrometer (SSS) indicated the presence of absorbing material corresponding to 10(12) M-circle dot of cold cluster gas, possibly resulting from cooling flows. Since this amount of cold gas is not confirmed by observations at other wavelengths, we examined whether this excess absorption is present in the ROSAT PSPC observations of 20 bright galaxy clusters. For 3/4 of the clusters, successful spectral fits were obtained with absorption due only to the Galaxy, and therefore no extra absorption is needed within the clusters, in disagreement with the results from the Einstein SSS data for some of the same clusters. For 1/4 of the clusters, none of our spectral fits was acceptable, suggesting a more complicated cluster medium than the two-temperature and cooling-flow models considered here. However, even for these clusters, substantial excess absorption is not indicated.