DA 495: An Aging Pulsar Wind Nebula with Possible TeV Gamma-Ray Counterpart
Abstract
A pulsar wind nebula is created when a high-mass star collapses and forms an isolated neutron star surrounded by a relativistic particle wind. DA 495 is thought to be such an object, although no pulsations have been detected. DA 495 was first detected in the radio band and is characterized by an annular radio morphology with a radio emission dip in the center. It has been theorized that the wind nebula has an unusually high magnetization of 1.3 mG, and the age of the PWN has been estimated from the 1.3 GHz energy break to be approximately 20 kyr. With such a high wind magnetization, one would expect synchrotron radiation to fall off fairly quickly, yet NuSTAR (the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) detected hard X-rays at energies greater than 10 keV, and a study of the Galactic Plane by the HAWC very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray telescope revealed a source coincident with DA 495 at energies greater than 10 TeV. This source was also detected at TeV energies by the VERITAS gamma-ray telescope. DA 495 was detected in the X-ray up to 10 keV by both Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray telescopes before NuSTAR performed follow-up observations of the region in June 2017. DA 495 is one of the first TeV sources observed by the NuSTAR-HAWC-VERITAS Galactic Legacy collaboration. We carried out spectral and imaging analysis of both NuSTAR and Chandra data on DA 495 and will present results of our study of DA 495.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #231
- Pub Date:
- January 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AAS...23145310C