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Confusion of Diffuse Objects in the X-ray Sky

G. Mark Voit, August E. Evrard, Greg L. Bryan

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0012191

Abstract

Most of the baryons in the present-day universe are thought to reside in intergalactic space at temperatures of 105-107 K. X-ray emission from these baryons contributes a modest (~10%) fraction of the ~ 1 keV background whose prominence within the large-scale cosmic web depends on the amount of non-gravitational energy injected into intergalactic space by supernovae and AGNs. Here we show that the virialized regions of groups and clusters cover over a third of the sky, creating a source-confusion problem that may hinder X-ray searches for individual intercluster filaments and contaminate observations of distant groups.

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