HST-STIS FUV Observations of the Cygnus Loop: Spatial Structure of a Non-radiative Shock

Details HST-STIS FUV Observations of the Cygnus Loop: Spatial Structure of a Non-radiative Shock HST-STIS FUV Observations of the Cygnus Loop: Spatial Structure of a Non-radiative Shock

May 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000aas...195.4316s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 195th AAS Meeting, #43.16; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.875

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At the north-east edge of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant, there is a network of faint filaments whose optical emission is dominated by the Balmer lines of hydrogen. These filaments trace the shock front formed by the blast wave from the supernova explosion interacting with the walls of the cavity in which the supernova exploded. An Hα image taken with the HST-WFPC2 shows the shock front as a gently rolling sheet of gas lying more or less along the line of sight (Blair, Sankrit, Raymond & Long, 1999, AJ, 118, 942). In the hot post-shock gas, different elements are moving towards high ionization stages, producing detectable resonance line emission in the ultraviolet. The gas, however, is still ionizing and has not had time to recombine and cool radiatively (hence the term ``nonradiative shock''). We present a STIS far-ultraviolet spectrum of a nonradiative shock taken with the 52"x0.5" slit placed perpendicular to the shock front. The G140L grating was used, covering the 1118 Angstroms - 1716 Angstroms wavelength range. The spectrum shows the spatial structure of the shock in several emission lines. The strongest lines are the N V λ 1240, C IV λ 1550 and He II λ 1640. In addition to these, we detect O V λ 1371, Si IV λ 1400, N IV] λ 1486 and faint hydrogen 2-photon continuum. We compare the observations with shock models in order to examine the properties of the emitting gas. In particular, we show how the spatial structure of the lines constrains the ion-electron equilibration in the shock. This spectrum is part of a larger data set, where the other spectra were taken with the slit parallel to the shock front. The interpretation of the entire data set is part of our on-going analysis. This work is supported by STScI grant GO-07289.01-96A to The Johns Hopkins University.

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