A Giant Warm Baryonic Halo for the Coma Cluster

Several deep PSPC observations of the Coma cluster unveil a very large-scale halo of soft X-ray emission, substantially in excess of the well know radiation from the hot intra-cluster medium. The excess emission, previously reported in the central cluster regions through lower-sensitivity EUVE and ROSAT data, is now evident out to a radius of 2.5 Mpc, demonstrating that the soft excess radiation from clusters is a phenomenon of cosmological significance. The spectrum at these large radii cannot be modeled non-thermally, but is consistent with the original scenario of thermal emission at warm temperatures. The mass of this plasma is at least on par with that of the hot X-ray emitting plasma, and significantly more massive if the plasma resides in low-density filamentary structures. Thus the data lend vital support to current theories of cosmic evolution, which predict greater than 50 percent by mass of today's baryons reside in warm-hot filaments converging at clusters of galaxies.