Tuesday 13 August 2013

Team succeeded in precisely measuring expansion velocity of shockwave of supernova remnant W44

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A research team led by Tomoro Sashida and Tomoharu Oka (Keio University) has succeeded in precisely measuring the expansion velocity of a shockwave of the supernova remnant W44. The remnant is located in the constellation of Aquila, approximately 10,000 light-years away from our solar system. The team observed the high-temperature and high-density molecular gas in the millimeter/submillimeter wave ranges. The analysis shows that the expansion velocity of the W44 shockwave is 12.9±0.2 km/sec. In addition, it became clear that the supernova explosion released kinetic energy of (1-3)×1050 erg into the interstellar medium. The energy emitted from the Sun is approximately 3.6 × 1033 ergs/sec. Can you image how enormous amount of energy is released from the supernova explosion? Furthermore, other molecular gas with an extremely high velocity of higher than 100 km/sec was also detected. The origin of this super-high-velocity molecular gas remains unclear at the present time.



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