What's The Point? Deep NICMOS Imaging of the Central X-ray Point Source in Cas A

Details What's The Point? Deep NICMOS Imaging of the Central X-ray Point Source in Cas A What's The Point? Deep NICMOS Imaging of the Central X-ray Point Source in Cas A

Jul 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003hst..prop.9798p&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #9798

Computer Science

Hst Proposal Id #9798 Hot Stars

Scientific paper

First-light Chandra X-ray Observatory images revealed an enigmatic central point source in Cas A, the Galaxy's youngest known supernova remnant {SN 1680}. The object lies within 7 arcsec of the remnant's expansion center and is presumably the remnant's neutron star with unusual properties. Deep Cycle 9 STIS observations and Keck's near-IR imaging detected only one object within the Chandra positional error circle, and this appears to be a foreground star. These optical and NIR upper limits already prove that the X-ray source cannot be a field star, an AGN, an ordinary pulsar, or an X-ray binary with any known type of optical companion. A likely possibility is that it is a very young magnetar that will evolve into an Anomalous X-ray Pulsar or a Soft Gamma-ray Repeater. Due to the high extinction to Cas A, deep NICMOS imaging offers the best way to search for a counterpart. Here we propose obtaining NIC2 H band images which will go to H=25.7 - almost 6 mags deeper than the previous searches and about 2 mags deeper than is realistically possible with Keck or Subaru. The high-resolution capability of NIC2 will also limit potential source confusion in this galactic plane region. We will obtain matching J images {to 27.2 mag} to provide color information on the candidate objects. These ultra-deep NICMOS images will either detect the counterpart and hence determine its nature, or place severe constraints on the properties of the point source.

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