2001/11/06 by Sangwook Park, David N. Burrows, Gordon P. Garmire +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/338492
29 pages, 5 figures (2 color images), Accepted for ApJ
arxiv created 2001/11/06 · openalex publication_date 2002/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We report on the results of our monitoring program of the remnant of SN 1987A with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) on board the Chandra X-Ray Observatory . Two new observations have been performed in AO2, bringing the total to four monitoring observations over the past 2 years. Over this time period, new techniques for correction of "charge transfer inefficiency" (CTI) and for use of charge spreading to provide angular resolution somewhat better than the pixel size of the CCD detector have become available at Pennsylvania State University. We have processed all four observations using subpixel resolution to obtain the highest possible angular resolution and using our CTI correction software to provide more reliable spectral analysis and flux estimations. The high angular resolution images indicate that the X-ray-bright knots are convincingly correlated with the optical spots, primarily at ≲1 keV, while higher energy photons are very well correlated with radio images. Our data also provide marginal evidence for radial expansion of the X-ray remnant at a rate of 5200 ± 2100 km s -1 . The X-ray flux appears to linearly increase by ~60% over the 18 month period of these observations. The spectrum is dominated by broad complexes of atomic emission lines and can be fitted with a simple model of a plane-parallel shock with electron temperatures of kT ~ 2-4 keV and a postshock electron density of n e ~ 210-420 cm -3 . The implied 0.5-10 keV band luminosity in 2001 April is ~1.3 × 10 35 ergs s -1 ; as of that date, we still observe no direct evidence for the central point source, with an upper limit on the observed luminosity of L X ~ 5.5 × 10 33 ergs s -1 in the 2-10 keV band.