CO(2-1) large scale mapping of the Perseus cluster core with HERA

Abstract

Cold molecular gas has recently been found is several cooling flow clusters cores with single dish telescopes. High spatial resolution imaging of some of these clusters then revealed the peculiar morphology and dynamics of the CO emission lines, pointing out a perturbed very cold component in the cluster centers. We report here the observations of NGC 1275, in the Perseus cluster of galaxies. This object is the strongest cooling flow emitter in the millimeter. The 9 dual polarization pixels of the HERA focal plane array, installed on the 30m telescope, enabled to image the large scale emission of the cold molecular gas which is found to follow the very peculiar Halpha filamentary structure around the central galaxy. We discuss here this association and the non-rotating dynamics of the cold gas that argue for a cooling flow origin of the molecular component.