An XMM-Newton mosaic of the Galactic supernova remnant HESS J1731-347 | ||||
Minimum credit line: Image courtesy of Victor Doroshenko, Gerd Pühlhofer and ESA. (for details, see Conditions of Use). Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO The image above can be displayed at full size and may be downloaded by clicking the image above. |
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The X-ray false-color image depicts the Galactic supernova remnant HESS J1731-347 observed with the XMM-Newton EPIC cameras. The extended, filamentary supernova remnant is the result of the explosion of a massive progenitor star. The bright source in the center is classified as the neutron star that remained after the explosion of the massive progenitor star as well. The neutron star has a purely thermal spectrum, i.e. the X-ray photons are emitted at the hot surface of the cooling neutron star. In contrast to that, the extended diffuse emission from the supernova remnant is purely of non-thermal origin, which means that the X-ray glow of the remnant is dominated by emission from relativistic electrons that are accelerated in the shocks of the expanding remnant. The RGB image is colour coded as red (0.4-1.8 keV), green (1.8-2.8 keV) and blue (2.8-10 keV). The remnant is seemingly getting dimmer from East to West (left to right in the image), and the emission appears more blueish (i.e. "harder") in the West. This is interpreted to be mainly due to absorption by a foreground molecular cloud, which is removing lower energy ("softer") X-ray photons predominantly from the Western part of the remnant. Investigator(s): Gerd Pühlhofer, Victor Doroshenko, Fabio Acero, Dmitry Klochkov, Aya Bamba, and Wenwu Tian
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