Testing MOND over a Wide Acceleration Range in X-Ray Ellipticals

The gravitational fields of two isolated ellipticals, NGC 720 and NGC 1521, have been recently measured to very large galactic radii (similar to 100 and similar to 200 kpc), assuming hydrostatic balance of the hot gas enshrouding them. They afford, for the first time to my knowledge, testing modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) in ellipticals with force and quality that, arguably, approach those of rotation-curve tests in disk galaxies. In the context of MOND, it is noteworthy that the measured accelerations span a wide range, from more than 10a(0) to about 0.1a(0), unprecedented in individual ellipticals. I find that MOND predicts correctly the measured dynamical mass runs (apart from a possible minor tension in the inner few kpc of NGC 720, which might be due to departure from hydrostatic equilibrium): The predicted mass discrepancy increases outward from none near the center, to similar to 10 at the outermost radii. The implications for the MOND-versus-dark-matter controversy go far beyond the simple fact of two more galaxies conforming to MOND.