Puppis A: Chandra Reveals Cloud Disrupted By Supernova Shock(Forwarded)

Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
(Phone: 617/496-7941)

February 15, 2006

Puppis A: Chandra Reveals Cloud Disrupted By Supernova Shock
[http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/puppisa/]

The Chandra three-color image (inset) of a region of the supernova remnant
Puppis A (wide-angle view from ROSAT in blue) reveals a cloud being torn
apart by a shock wave produced in a supernova explosion. This is the first
X-ray identification of such a process in an advanced phase. In the inset,
the blue vertical bar and the blue fuzzy ball or cap to the right show how
the cloud has been spread out into an oval-shaped structure that is almost
empty in the center. The Chandra data also provides information on the
temperature in and around the cloud, with blue representing higher
temperature gas.

The oval structure strongly resembles those seen on much smaller size
scales in experimental simulations of the interaction of supernova shock
waves with dense interstellar clouds (see sequence of laboratory images).
In these experiments, a strong shock wave sweeps over a vaporized copper
ball that has a diameter roughly equal to a human hair. The cloud is
compressed, and then expands in about 40 nanoseconds to form an oval bar
and cap structure much like that seen in Puppis A.

On a cosmic scale, the disruption of 10-light-year-diameter cloud in
Puppis A took a few thousand years. Despite the vast difference in scale,
the experimental structures and those observed by Chandra are remarkably
similar. The similarity gives astrophysicists insight into the interaction
of supernova shock waves with interstellar clouds.

Understanding this process is important for answering key questions such
as the role supernovas play in heating interstellar gas and triggering the
collapse of large interstellar clouds to form new generations of stars.