THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CIRCUMSTELLAR RING OF SN 1987A

Journal Article · Wed Jun 10 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/806/1/L19· OSTI ID:22518959

Fransson, Claes; Migotto, Katia; Lundqvist, Peter; Taddia, Francesco; Sollerman, Jesper ^[1]; Larsson, Josefin ^[2]; Pesce, Dominic; Chevalier, Roger A. ^[3]; Challis, Peter; Kirshner, Robert P. ^[4]; France, Kevin ^[5]; Leibundgut, Bruno; Spyromilio, Jason ^[6]; McCray, Richard ^[7]; Jerkstrand, Anders ^[8]; Mattila, Seppo ^[9]; Smith, Nathan ^[10]; Wheeler, J. Craig ^[11]; Crotts, Arlin ^[12]; Garnavich, Peter ^[13] ; others, and

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1. Department of Astronomy, The Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, Alba Nova University Centre, SE-106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)
2. KTH, Department of Physics, and the Oskar Klein Centre, AlbaNova, SE-106 91 Stockholm (Sweden)
3. Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400325, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325 (United States)
4. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS-19, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
5. Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, 392 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)
6. European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse, 2, D-85748 Garching bei München (Germany)
7. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411 (United States)
8. School of Mathematics and Physics, Queens University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN (United Kingdom)
9. Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Väisäläntie 20, FI-21500 Piikkiö (Finland)
10. Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
11. Department of Astronomy, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712-0259 (United States)
12. Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027 (United States)
13. 25 Nieuwland Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5670 (United States)

We present imaging and spectroscopic observations with Hubble Space Telescope and Very Large Telescope of the ring of SN 1987A from 1994 to 2014. After an almost exponential increase of the shocked emission from the hotspots up to day ∼8000 (∼2009), both this and the unshocked emission are now fading. From the radial positions of the hotspots we see an acceleration of these up to 500–1000 km s{sup −1}, consistent with the highest spectroscopic shock velocities from the radiative shocks. In the most recent observations (2013 and 2014), we find several new hotspots outside the inner ring, excited by either X-rays from the shocks or by direct shock interaction. All of these observations indicate that the interaction with the supernova ejecta is now gradually dissolving the hotspots. We predict, based on the observed decay, that the inner ring will be destroyed by ∼2025.

• OSTI ID: 22518959
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 806, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCELERATION
EMISSION
SHOCK WAVES
SPACE
SUPERNOVAE
TELESCOPES
VELOCITY
X RADIATION