A Million Second Chandra View of Cassiopeia A

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Cassiopeia A is the remnant of the penultimate Galactic supernova, which has now been shown by light echo observations to have been a Type IIb core collapse. Despite its youth, extensive pre-supernova mass loss in stellar winds by its progenitor makes Cas A the most promising of the known core-collapse remnants for studying the explosive nucleosynthesis products, particularly the Fe ejecta. It has become increasingly evident that the supernova explosion imparted a highly asymmetric distribution to the ejecta composition, and Chandra's 1 Ms observation has contributed valuable insights into the ejecta asymmetry. We examined the spectra of thousands of ejecta regions to characterize their thermal and chemical properties. I will discuss the mass and composition of the ejecta inferred from these results, with particular attention to the mass and location of the ejected Fe. Cas A is well observed at all wavebands from radio to TeV Gamma-Ray, with the exception of the EUV. In particular, infra-red observations of unshocked ejecta, combined with optical and X-ray observations of shocked ejecta allow (in principle) a complete census of the explosion products of Cas A. I will discuss the implications of these analyses for the explosion that produced Cas A, and offer some ideas coming from our work concerning the natal kick imparted to the neutron star. This work was supported by grants from the Chandra GO and NASA LTSA programs.

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