Abstract. We present here the results of a deep (130 ks) XMM-Newton observation of the cluster of galaxies 2A 0335+096. The deep exposure allows us to study in detail its temperature structure and its elemental abundances. We fit three different thermal models and find that the multi-temperature wdem model fits our data best. We find that the abundance structure of the cluster is consistent with a scenario where the relative number of Type Ia supernovae contributing to the enrichment of the intra-cluster medium is ∼ 25%, while the relative number of core collapse supernovae is ∼ 75%. Comparison of the observed abundances to the supernova yields does not allow us to put any constrains on the contribution of Pop III stars to the enrichment of the ICM. Radial abundance profiles show a strong central peak of both Type Ia and core collapse supernova products. Both the temperature and iron abundance maps show an asymmetry in the direction of the elongated morphology of the surface brightness. In particular the temperature map shows a sharp change over a brightness edge on the southern side of the core, which was identified as a cold front in the Chandra data. This suggests that the cluster is in the process of a merger with a subcluster. Moreover, we find that the blobs or filaments discovered in the core of the cluster by Chandra are, contrary to the previous results, colder than the ambient gas and they appear to be in pressure equilibrium with their environment.

Recently, the first detections of highly ionized gas associated with two warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM ) filaments have been reported. The evidence is based on X-ray absorption lines due to O vii and other ions observed by Chandra toward the bright blazar Mrk 421. We investigate the robustness of this detection by a reanalysis of the original Chandra LETGS spectra, the analysis of a large set of XMM-Newton RGS spectra of Mrk 421, and additional Chandra observations. We address the reliability of individual spectral features belonging to the absorption components, and assess the significance of the detection of these components. We also use Monte Carlo simulations of spectra. We confirm the apparent strength of several features in the Chandra spectra, but demonstrate that they are statistically not significant. This decreased significance is due to the number of redshift trials that are made and that are not taken into account in the original discovery paper. Therefore, these features must be attributed to statistical fluctuations. This is confirmed by the RGS spectra, which have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than the Chandra spectra, but do not show features at the same wavelengths. Finally, we show that the possible association with a Ly absorption system also lacks sufficient statistical evidence. We conclude that there is insufficient observational proof for the existence of the two proposed WHIM filaments toward Mrk 421, the brightest X-ray blazar in the sky. Therefore, the highly ionized component of the WHIM still remains to be discovered. Subject headingg s: BL Lacertae objects: individual ( Mrk 421) -large-scale structure of universequasars: absorption lines -X-rays: ISM