We examine the supernova remnant (SNR) 0540-697 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using data from the Chandra ACIS. The X-ray emission from this SNR had previously been hidden in the bright emission of nearby X-ray binary LMC X-1; however, new observations with Chandra can finally reveal the SNR's structure and spectrum. We find the SNR to be a thick-shelled structure about 19 pc in diameter, with a brightened northeast region. Spectral results suggest a temperature of 0.31 keV and an X-ray luminosity (0.3-3.0 keV) of 8.4 x 10^33 erg/s. We estimate an age of 12,000-20,000 yr for this SNR, but note that this estimate does not take into account the possibility of cavity expansion or other environmental effects.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0004171,
title = {Resolving SNR 0540-6944 from LMC X-1 with Chandra},
author = {Rosa Murphy Williams and Robert Petre and You-Hua Chu and C. -H. Rosie Chen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0004171},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 2 GIF figures. Submitted to ApJL. Replaced with minor revisions from referee comments