English

Absence of hot gas within the Wolft-Rayet Bubble around WR16

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2015-06-17 v2

Abstract

We present the analysis of XMM-Newton archival observations towards the Wolf-Rayet (WR) bubble around WR16. Despite the closed bubble morphology of this WR nebula, the XMM-Newton observations show no evidence of diffuse emission in its interior as in the similar WR bubbles NGC6888 and S308. We use the present observations to estimate a 3-\sigma upper limit to the X-ray luminosity in the 0.3-1.5 keV energy band equal to 7.4x10^{32} erg s^{-1} for the diffuse emission from the WR nebula, assuming a distance of 2.37 kpc. The WR nebula around WR16 is the fourth observed by the current generation of X-ray satellites and the second not detected. We also examine FUSE spectra to search for nebular O VI absorption lines in the stellar continuum of WR16. The present far-UV data and the lack of measurements of the dynamics of the optical WR bubble do not allow us to confirm the existence of a conductive layer of gas at T~3x10^5 K between the cold nebular gas and the hot gas in its interior. The present observations result in an upper limit of n_e < 0.6 cm^-3 on the electron density of the X-ray emitting material within the nebula.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1309.0236,
  title  = {Absence of hot gas within the Wolft-Rayet Bubble around WR16},
  author = {J. A. Toalá and M. A. Guerrero},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.0236},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; To appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics