Temperature Map and Iron Abundance of the Ophiuchus Cluster of Galaxies

We present an X-ray surface-brightness distribution and a temperature map of the Ophiuchus cluster of galaxies observed by ASCA. The Ophiuchus cluster is a nearby rich cluster located at $ z= 0.028$ having an angular extent of ~ 1 ∘. The observations were made by five pointings that cover the whole cluster. After deconvolution with the ASCA complex response function, we obtained the surface-brightness distribution with an angular resolution of 2 and a temperature map with 8 resolution. The X-ray surface-brightness distribution shows a nearly spherically symmetric distribution, except for a 15σ image excess at the position of 10 to the north of the cluster center. On the other hand, a hot region with a temperature > 13 \,keV is spread over a region of 20× 30 at 20 to the west of the cluster center. Because these characteristics are similar to those of the Coma cluster, we conclude this cluster has never relaxed dynamically, and is also recently experienced a merger.