090074

Suzaku observations of the outskirts of the Virgo cluster have revealed a very high gas mass fraction to the North and South while the entropy unphysically decreases outwards. This suggests a very high level of clumping and/or non thermal pressure support. XMM.s high spatial resolution allows it to constrain the level of gas clumping by binning images into a tessellation. Here we propose 5 XMM observations totaling 155ks to cover the regions of Virgo where the Suzaku has found the highest gas mass fraction and lowest entropy. This will allow us to constrain gas clumping to clumping correct the thermodynamic profiles and infer the level of non thermal pressure support. Virgo.s proximity allows us to probe clumping with 100x better spatial resolution than before. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]