The X-ray Remnant of SN1987A
Abstract
We present high resolution Chandra observations of the remnant of SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The high angular resolution of the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) permits us to resolve the X-ray remnant. We find that the remnant is shell-like in morphology, with X-ray peaks associated with some of the optical hot spots seen in HST images. The X-ray light curve has departed from the linear flux increase observed by ROSAT, with a 0.5-2.0 keV luminosity of 1.5 x 10^35 erg/s in January 2000. We set an upper limit of 2.3 x 10^34 ergs/s on the luminosity of any embedded central source (0.5 - 2 keV). We also present a high resolution spectrum, showing that the X-ray emission is thermal in origin and is dominated by highly ionized species of O, Ne, Mg, and Si.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0009265,
title = {The X-ray Remnant of SN1987A},
author = {David N. Burrows and Eli Michael and Una Hwang and Richard McCray and Roger A. Chevalier and Robert Petre and Gordon P. Garmire and Stephen S. Holt and John A. Nousek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0009265},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
16 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters