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.