Skip to main content

GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM THE SNR HB3

Image: At a distance of about 20,000 light years, G292.0+1.8 is one of only three supernova remnants in the Milky Way known to contain large amounts of oxygen. These oxygen-rich supernovas are of great interest to astronomers because they are one of the primary sources of the heavy elements (that is, everything other than hydrogen and helium) necessary to form planets and people. The X-ray image from Chandra shows a rapidly expanding, intricately structured, debris field that contains, along with oxygen (yellow and orange), other elements such as magnesium (green) and silicon and sulfur (blue) that were forged in the star before it exploded. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO

The processes of particles acceleration to very high energies from the supernova shock region and diffusion in the interstellar medium of such particles has not been well understood so far. Gamma-ray observations in the GeV regime are a powerful probe of these mechanisms


In a recent paper (Katagiri et al. 2016, ApJ) the authors report the discovery of extended gamma-ray emission spatially correlated with the region of the supernova remnant (SNR) HB 3 (G132.7+1.3) and the W3 H II complex adjacent to the southeast of the remnant. W3 is a region rich of CO clouds.



Supernova remnant HB 3 (www.cfa.harvard.edu)

The authors find that the decay of neutral pions produced in nucleon-nucleon interactions between accelerated hadrons and interstellar gas provides a reasonable explanation for the gamma-ray emission from HB3. The cosmic rays accelerated in HB 3 irradiate the CO clouds and generate the emission from W3 region.




▪ Katagiri et al. 2016, ApJ - Fermi LAT Discovery of Extended Gamma-Ray Emissions in the Vicinity of the HB3 Supernova Remnant (arXiv)



Etichette:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fermi Bubbles

Image: A giant gamma-ray structure was discovered in 2010 by processing Fermi all-sky data at energies from 1 to 10 billion electron volts, shown here. The dumbbell-shaped feature (center) emerges from the galactic center and extends 50 degrees north and south from the plane of the Milky Way, spanning the sky from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus. Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/D. Finkbeiner et al. At a time when our earliest human ancestors mastered walking upright the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour.
Post a Comment
Read more

CONTAMINATION BY SUPERNOVAE IN GLOBULAR CLUSTERS

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Only a small amount of the supernovae products remains trapped within globular clusters and this "catch" only occurs in the most massive cases (mass cluster ≥ 10^6 solar masses).
Post a Comment
Read more

NASA SDO Image: Jack-o-Lantern Sun

Image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory  Credit: NASA/SDO Active regions on the sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern’s face on Oct. 8, 2014. The image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which watches the sun at all times from its orbit in space. The active regions in this image appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy.  They are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. This image blends together two sets of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths at 171 and 193 Ångströms, typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance. Credit: NASA/SDO Next Post Dawn Finds Possible Ancient Ocean Remnants at Ceres  
Post a Comment
Read more