Star formation in the cooling flows of M87/Virgo and NGC 1275/Perseus

Abstract

X-ray observations indicate that M87/Virgo and NGC 1275/Perseus have cooling flows that are associated with accretion rates of 20-30 and 300-500 solar masses/year, respectively. An assessment is made as to whether star formation is necessarily occurring in these cooling flows by calculating constant mass-flux models for all reasonable parameter space. No constant-mass-flux models that are consistent with all of the relevant observations are found; hence, it is concluded that mass is dropping out of these cooling flows.