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
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| About this Image |
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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
| For More Information |
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- Detailed description of this image
- Query XSA archive for XMM-Newton data in the field of HESS J1731-347
- Astronomical database entries for HESS J1731-347;
- Query SIMBAD for more HESS J1731-347 data
- For unfamiliar terms, visit the XMM-Newton Astronomical Glossary
| Instrument | EPIC | ||
| Observing Mode | Full Frame | ||
| Filter | Medium | ||
| Date of Observation | 2014-02-24 | ||
| Image size | 50.00 x 50.00 arcmin | ||
| Detailed Caption | The image combines data from XMM-Newton observations of the remnant taken between 2007-03-21 and 2014-02-24 with a total duration of ~300 ks. Heavy contamination of the field by the stray-light from a nearby bright X-ray source necessitated exclusion of the most heavily contaminated areas in individual images and subsequent correction for the residual contamination as estimated from spatially-resolved spectral analysis of the remnant. The resulting images were combined and adaptively smoothed to contain at least 300 counts in each pixel using the SAS task adapt_merge. | ||
| Alternate Resolutions | (Help) |
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