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Directly imaging the cooling flow in the Phoenix cluster

Nature volume 638, pages 360–364 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

In the centres of many galaxy clusters, the hot (approximately 107 kelvin) intracluster medium can become dense enough that it should cool on short timescales1,2. However, the low measured star formation rates in massive central galaxies3,4,5,6 and the absence of soft X-ray lines from the cooling gas7,8,9 suggest that most of this gas never cools. This is known as the cooling flow problem. The latest observations suggest that black hole jets are maintaining the vast majority of gas at high temperatures10,11,12,13,14,15,16. A cooling flow has yet to be fully mapped through all the gas phases in any galaxy cluster. Here we present observations of the Phoenix cluster17 using the James Webb Space Telescope to map the [Ne vi] λ 7.652-μm emission line, enabling us to probe the gas at 105.5 kelvin on large scales. These data show extended [Ne vi] emission that is cospatial with the cooling peak in the intracluster medium, the coolest gas phases and the sites of active star formation. Taken together, these imply a recent episode of rapid cooling, causing a short-lived spike in the cooling rate, which we estimate to be 5,000–23,000 solar masses per year. These data provide a large-scale map of gas at temperatures between 105 kelvin and 106 kelvin in a cluster core, and highlight the critical role that black hole feedback has in not only regulating cooling but also promoting it18.

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Fig. 1: Maps of the [Ne vi]-emitting coronal gas in the central galaxy of the Phoenix cluster overlaid with the hotter and colder gas phases, and starlight.
Fig. 2: A radial surface brightness profile of the northern [Ne vi] emission in the central galaxy of the Phoenix cluster.
Fig. 3: Cloudy-simulated cooling rates for a radiatively cooling parcel of gas that is being illuminated by a central AGN at various distances from the nucleus.
Fig. 4: North–south velocity profile of the [Ne vi]-emitting gas in the central galaxy of the Phoenix cluster, overlaid with various models.

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Data availability

Data for JWST programme ID 2439 are publicly available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Supplementary data used in our analysis from HST are also available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. Chandra data are available from the Chandra Data Archive (https://cxc.harvard.edu/cda/).

Code availability

JWST, HST and Chandra data were reduced using the publicly available reduction pipeline codes provided by the Space Telescope Science Institute and Chandra X-ray Center. The Likelihood Optimization of gas Kinematics code used in our analysis is available through GitHub at https://github.com/Michael-Reefe/Loki.jl, and Cloudy is available at https://nublado.org. We also provide our customized driver scripts for data reduction and analysis through GitHub at https://github.com/Michael-Reefe/Reefe2024_code_supplements.

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Acknowledgements

This work is based on observations with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated, under NASA contract number NAS 5-03127. Support for programme number JWST-GO-02439.001-A was provided through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute under NASA contract number NAS 5-03127. This work is also based in part on observations made with the NASA/ESA HST obtained from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under NASA contract number NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with programme number GO15315. Support for this work was also provided by NASA through Chandra award number GO7-18124 issued by Chandra, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract number NAS8-03060. M.R. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant number 2141064. M.G. acknowledges support from the ERC Consolidator Grant BlackHoleWeather (101086804). M. Chatzikos acknowledges support from NSF (1910687) and NASA (19-ATP19-0188 and 22-ADAP22-0139). H.R. acknowledges an Anne McLaren Fellowship from the University of Nottingham. We thank the members of the MIRI/MRS instrument team, particularly D.L., for providing advice and guidance in reducing and cleaning the MIRI/MRS data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kavli Institute for Astrophsyics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael Reefe, Michael McDonald & Michael Calzadilla

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Marios Chatzikos

  3. Department of Astronomy and Joint Space-Science Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Jerome Seebeck, Richard Mushotzky & Sylvain Veilleux

  4. Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Steven W. Allen

  5. Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Steven W. Allen

  6. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Steven W. Allen

  7. Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Matthew Bayliss

  8. Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael Calzadilla

  9. Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

    Rebecca Canning

  10. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri–Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

    Benjamin Floyd

  11. Department of Physics, Informatics and Mathematics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Massimo Gaspari

  12. Département de Physique, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo

  13. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Brian McNamara

  14. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, University Park, UK

    Helen Russell

  15. Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Keren Sharon

  16. Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand

    Taweewat Somboonpanyakul

Authors
  1. Michael Reefe
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  2. Michael McDonald
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Contributions

M.R. reduced the MIRI/MRS data; wrote and ran the spectral fitting and PSF decomposition code; performed the main analysis of the ionization, kinematics and cooling; and wrote the paper. M.M. provided substantial guidance in the main analyses, interpretation of the results and writing the paper; he also wrote the original proposal for the MIRI/MRS data. M. Chatzikos performed the Cloudy simulations and wrote the description of these processes in Methods. J.S. performed a sanity check on our data reduction and spectral modelling by running an independent pipeline (Q3Dfit). K.S. formulated strong lensing models to estimate the gravitational potential, which we used in our kinematic modelling. R.M., S.V., S.W.A., M.B., M. Calzadilla, R.C., B.F., M.G., J.H.-L., B.M., H.R. and T.S. provided feedback on the paper drafts.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Reefe.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 The field of view of the MIRI/MRS instrument relative to the size of the central galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster.

The field of view of each of the four MIRI channels shown over a 3-color image of the core of the Phoenix cluster using data from HST/ACS in the F475W, F775W, and F850LP filters. The dust-obscured AGN lies at the center of the brightest cluster galaxy. The angular and physical scales are annotated in the bottom-left.

Extended Data Fig. 2 The full mid-infrared spectrum of the central galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster.

A spectrum covering MIRI channels 2–4 (excluding the long wavelength end of 4C), and integrated over the full channel 2 FOV. The top panel shows the data in black and the model in orange, while the bottom panel shows the residuals. The model is also decomposed into components: the gray solid lines are the thermal dust continua, the green line is the QSO PSF model, the blue line is the PAH emission, the purple lines are the emission lines, and the dotted gray line shows the extinction profile. The sum of the thermal dust continua and QSO PSF is also shown by the thick gray line. The emission lines are labeled at the top of the plot, with vertical dashed lines showing their locations in the spectrum. The boundaries between channels and bands are also shown at the top of the plot with blue arrows. The translucent orange region shows the range of models produced in the different bootstrapping iterations.

Extended Data Fig. 3 A zoomed-in emission line spectrum of the central galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster.

A subset of the MIRI channel 3 spectrum zoomed in on the [Ne vi] line. This spectrum includes only a single spaxel north of the nucleus. The formatting of everything is identical to Extended Data Fig. 2, except that there is no translucent orange region since this fit has not been bootstrapped. The two distinct kinematic components of the emission lines can be seen in purple.

Extended Data Fig. 4 A series of flux maps for [Ne vi] over the MIRI channel 3 FOV showing the decomposition into various spatial and kinematic components.

a-c show the QSO and host galaxy components of the flux. a, the total observed flux, b, the flux from the QSO that has been dispersed according to the PSF model, and c, the QSO-subtracted flux that is attributed to the host galaxy. d-f show the further decomposition of the host galaxy flux into 2 distinct kinematic components, now with an S/N cut such that only spaxels with a detection of S/N ≥ 3 are shown. d, the combined flux from both kinematic components, making it identical to c except for the SNR cut. e and f, the fluxes from each individual kinematic component, sorted in order of decreasing flux. The color scales are shown on the right of each row and are the same for each panel in that row. The physical scale in kpc and angular scale in arcsec are annotated in the bottom left of each panel, and the FWHM of the PSF at the wavelength of [Ne vi] is shown in the bottom right of each panel.

Extended Data Fig. 5 A series of flux maps for [Ne ii] over the MIRI channel 4 FOV showing the decomposition into various spatial and kinematic components.

Same as Extended Data Fig. 4, but for [Ne ii] λ12.813 μm.

Extended Data Fig. 6 A series of maps for [Ne v] over the MIRI channel 4 FOV showing the decomposition into various spatial and kinematic components.

Same as Extended Data Fig. 4, but for [Ne v] λ14.322 μm.

Extended Data Fig. 7 A series of kinematic maps for [Ne vi] over the MIRI channel 3 FOV showing the decomposition into various kinematic components.

a-c show the line velocity widths. a, the W80 of the full line profile, b and c, the FWHMs of the individual kinematic components. d-f show the LOS velocities. d, the median LOS velocity of the full line profile, e and f, the peak velocities of the individual kinematic components. All maps have an S/N ≥ 3 cut. The color scales are shown on the right of each row and are the same for each panel in that row. The physical scale in kpc and angular scale in arcsec are annotated in the bottom left of each panel, and the FWHM of the PSF at the wavelength of [Ne vi] is shown in the bottom right of each panel.

Extended Data Fig. 8 A series of kinematic maps for [Ne ii] over the MIRI channel 4 FOV showing the decomposition into various kinematic components.

Same as Extended Data Fig. 7, but for [Ne ii] λ12.813 μm.

Extended Data Fig. 9 A series of kinematic maps for [Ne v] over the MIRI channel 4 FOV showing the decomposition into various kinematic components.

Same as Extended Data Fig. 7, but for [Ne v] λ14.322 μm.

Extended Data Table 1 Emission line fluxes in various regions
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–3, Tables 1 and 2, and References.

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Reefe, M., McDonald, M., Chatzikos, M. et al. Directly imaging the cooling flow in the Phoenix cluster. Nature 638, 360–364 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08369-x

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