Feature-tailored spectroscopic analysis of the supernova remnant Puppis A in X-rays

LUNA G. J. M.; SMITH M. J. S.; DUBNER G., GIACANI E.; CASTELLETTI G.

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

EDP SCIENCES S A

Lugar: Paris; Año: 2016 vol. 590 p. 70 - 74

0004-6361

We introduce a distinct method to perform spatially-resolved spectral analysis of astronomical sources with highly structured X-ray emission. Themethod measures the surface brightness of neighbouring pixels to adaptivelysize and shape each region, thus the spectra from the bright and faintfilamentary structures evident in the broadband images can be extracted. As atest case, we present the spectral analysis of the complete X-ray emittingplasma in the supernova remnant Puppis A observed with XMM-Newton and Chandra.Given the angular size of Puppis A, many pointings with different observationalconfigurations have to be combined, presenting a challenge to any method ofspatially-resolved spectroscopy. From the fit of a plane-parallel shockedplasma model we find that temperature, absorption column, ionization timescale, emission measure and elemental abundances of O, Ne, Mg, Si, S and Fe,are smoothly distributed in the remnant. Some regions with overabundances ofO-Ne-Mg, previously characterized as ejecta material, were automaticallyselected by our method, proving the excellent response of the technique. Thismethod is an advantageous tool for the exploitation of archival X-ray data.