HESS J1731-347 : a new TeV shell-type SNR ?

In the survey of the Galactic plane conducted with H.E.S.S., many TeV gamma-ray sources were discovered for which no clear counterpart at other wavelengths could be identified. HESS J1731-347 initially belonged to this source class. Recently however, the new shell-type super-nova remnant (SNR) G353.6-0.7 was discovered in radio data, positionally coinciding with the TeV source. X-ray observations covering a fraction of the TeV source revealed a shell struc-ture emitting non-thermal X-rays. Observations with the H.E.S.S. experiment have recently suggested a shell morphology in gamma-rays although not statistically significant. A larger H.E.S.S. data set, which comprises four times the observation time used in the discovery paper, allows us to investigate with greater statistics the gamma-ray morphology of the source and to test further the association of the TeV source with the new SNR. If true, this would make HESS J1731-347 a new object in the small but growing class of X-ray non-thermal shell-type supernova remnants with TeV emission.