Directly imaging the cooling flow in the Phoenix cluster

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 galaxies3–6 and the absence of soft X-ray lines from the cooling gas7–9 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 temperatures10–16. 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.