English

Discovery of an Apparent High Latitude Galactic Supernova Remnant

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-10-14 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Deep Hα\alpha images of a faint emission complex 4.0 x 5.5 degrees in angular extent and located far off the Galactic plane at l = 70.0 degrees, b=-21.5 degrees reveal numerous thin filaments suggestive of a supernova remnant's shock emission. Low dispersion optical spectra covering the wavelength range 4500 - 7500 A show only Balmer line emissions for one filament while three others show a Balmer dominated spectrum along with weak [N I] 5198, 5200 A, [O I] 6300, 6364 A, [N II] 6583 A, [S II] 6716, 6731 A and in one case [O III] 5007 A line emission. Many of the brighter Hα\alpha filaments are visible in near UV GALEX images presumably due to C III] 1909 A line emission. ROSAT All Sky Survey images of this region show a faint crescent shaped X-ray emission nebula coincident with the portion of the Hα\alpha nebulosity closest to the Galactic plane. The presence of long, thin Balmer dominated emission filaments with associated UV emission and coincident X-ray emission suggests this nebula is a high latitude Galactic supernova remnant despite a lack of known associated nonthermal radio emission. Relative line intensities of the optical lines in some filaments differ from commonly observed [S II]/Hα\alpha > 0.4 radiative shocked filaments and typical Balmer filaments in supernova remnants. We discuss possible causes for the unusual optical SNR spectra.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.06291,
  title  = {Discovery of an Apparent High Latitude Galactic Supernova Remnant},
  author = {Robert Fesen and Jack Neustadt and Christine Black and Ari Koeppel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.06291},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

12 pages, 10 figures, accepted to the Astrophysical Journal