Supernova Remnant 1987A: High Resolution Images and Spectrum from Chandra Observations
Abstract
We report on the morphological and spectral evolution of SNR 1987A from the monitoring observations with the Chandra/ACIS. As of 2005, the X-ray-bright lobes are continuously brightening and expanding all around the ring. The softening of the overall X-ray spectrum also continues. The X-ray lightcurve is particularly remarkable: i.e., the recent soft X-ray flux increase rate is significantly deviating from the model which successfully fits the earlier data, indicating even faster flux increase rate since early 2004 (day ~6200). We also report results from high resolution spectral analysis with deep Chandra/LETG observations. The high resolution X-ray line emission features unambiguously reveal that the X-ray emission of SNR 1987A is originating primarily from a "disk" along the inner ring rather than from a spherical shell. We present the ionization structures, elemental abundances, and the shock velocities of the X-ray emitting plasma.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0511355,
title = {Supernova Remnant 1987A: High Resolution Images and Spectrum from Chandra Observations},
author = {Sangwook Park and Svetozar A. Zhekov and David N. Burrows and Judith L. Racusin and Richard McCray and Kazimierz J. Borkowski},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0511355},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
6 pages (A4 size) including 8 figures & 1 table. To appear in the proceedings of "The X-Ray Universe 2005" conference, Sept 26-30, 2005, El Escorial, Madrid, Spain