The CGPS continumm maps at 1420 MHz.
A new shell-type faint radio Supernova Remnant (SNR) has been discovered by CAS astronomer TIAN Wenwu and his Canadian colleagues, as reported by the April 3 issue of
Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Named
SNR G108.2-0.6, the remnant is about ten thousand light years away from the Earth with an expansion diameter of some 180 light years. It is also of the lowest surface brightness among all known remnants, according to Dr. Tian, a researcher from the CAS-affiliated National Astronomical Observatories and first author of the paper.
The discovery was made with the support of the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS), a Canada-headed international collaboration to map all of the major interstellar components of the Milky Way. The project initiated ten years ago, and will by plan wind up in 2009.
SNR is an object produced by the violent explosion of a massive star at the end of its life. The explosion, called a supernova, is one of the most energetic events in the universe, and believed to occur in our galaxy roughly two to three every hundred years on average. The energy released in a supernova has major effects on the interstellar media and greatly impacts the ecology of the Milky Way.
Although there were plenty of records on supernova phenomena in ancient China, preliterate events can only be traced down through modern scientific techniques. With up-to-date CGPS survey data that combine high sensitivity and resolution, the paper gave a comprehensive analysis on the key parameters of the newly-discovered
SNR G108.2-0.6.
Research on SNRs has been an interesting and important topic for astronomers since there is discrepancy between the number of known SNRs (about 256) and the number predicted by theory (about 1,000 Galactic SNRs and 10,000 SNRs), a result of today's sensitivity-limited surveys.
Dr. Tian and his colleagues had already reported their discovery on an old SNR as the origin of high-energy cosmic γ-rays in the March 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
