Ejecta Knot Evolution in Cas A
Abstract
Supernova remnants are remarkable laboratories for studying, among other phenomena, explosive nucleosynthesis and plasma dynamics. Time-dependent signatures of such processes can further inform our understanding, and may be found in widely spaced epochs of observation from high spatial and spectral resolution instruments.
We investigated the spectral evolution in the X-ray band of the bright ejecta knots in Cassiopeia A over the last decade. Both dispersed and non-dispersed spectra from the Chandra HETG and ACIS instruments were used for this study, helping to better constrain signs of evolution. We present our findings of how such physical properties as the temperature, elemental abundances, velocity, and non-equilibrium ionization age changed over ten years of the several hundred year old remnant's lifetime, along with a careful analysis of the confounding background contamination and model parameter correlations.- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #217
- Pub Date:
- January 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AAS...21743431R