Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userSNR 1E 0102.2-7219 as an X-ray Calibration Standard in the 0.5-1.0 keV Bandpass and Its Application to the CCD Instruments aboard Chandra, Suzaku, Swift and XMM-Newton
104
0
0.0
(
0
)
Authors
Paul P. Plucinsky
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We desire a simple comparison of the absolute effective areas of the current generation of CCD instruments onboard the following observatories: Chandra ACIS-S3, XMM-Newton (EPIC-MOS and EPIC-pn), Suzaku XIS, and Swift XRT and a straightforward comparison of the time-dependent response of these instruments across their respective mission lifetimes. We have been using 1E 0102.2-7219, the brightest supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, to evaluate and modify the response models of these instruments. 1E 0102.2-7219 has strong lines of O, Ne, and Mg below 1.5 keV and little or no Fe emission to complicate the spectrum. As part of the activities of the International Astronomical Consortium for High Energy Calibration (IACHEC), we have developed a standard spectral model for 1E 0102.2-7219. The model is empirical in that it includes Gaussians for the identified lines, an absorption component in the Galaxy, another absorption component in the SMC, and two thermal continuum components. In our fits, the model is highly constrained in that only the normalizations of the four brightest lines/line complexes (the O vii He$alpha$ triplet, O viii Ly$alpha$ line, the Ne ix He$alpha$ triplet, and the Ne x Ly$alpha$ line) and an overall normalization are allowed to vary. We have examined these measured line fluxes as a function of time for each instrument after applying the most recent calibrations that account for the time-dependent response of each instrument. We perform our effective area comparison with representative, early mission data when the radiation damage and contamination layers were at a minimum. We find that the measured fluxes of these lines generally agree to within +/-10% for all instruments, with 38 of our 48 fitted normalizations within +/-10% of the IACHEC model value.
rate research
Read More
The flight calibration of the spectral response of CCD instruments below 1.5 keV is difficult in general because of the lack of strong lines in the on-board calibration sources typically available. We have been using 1E 0102.2-7219, the brightest supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, to evaluate the response models of the ACIS CCDs on the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), the EPIC CCDs on the XMM-Newton Observatory, the XIS CCDs on the Suzaku Observatory, and the XRT CCD on the Swift Observatory. E0102 has strong lines of O, Ne, and Mg below 1.5 keV and little or no Fe emission to complicate the spectrum. The spectrum of E0102 has been well characterized using high-resolution grating instruments, namely the XMM-Newton RGS and the CXO HETG, through which a consistent spectral model has been developed that can then be used to fit the lower-resolution CCD spectra. We have also used the measured intensities of the lines to investigate the consistency of the effective area models for the various instruments around the bright O (~570 eV and 654 eV) and Ne (~910 eV and 1022 eV) lines. We find that the measured fluxes of the O VII triplet, the O VIII Ly-alpha line, the Ne IX triplet, and the Ne X Ly-alpha line generally agree to within +/-10 % for all instruments, with 28 of our 32 fitted normalizations within +/-10% of the RGS-determined value. The maximum discrepancies, computed as the percentage difference between the lowest and highest normalization for any instrument pair, are 23% for the O VII triplet, 24% for the O VIII Ly-alpha line, 13% for the Ne IX triplet, and 19% for the Ne X Ly-alpha line. If only the CXO and XMM are compared, the maximum discrepancies are 22% for the O VII triplet, 16% for the O VIII Ly-alpha line, 4% for the Ne IX triplet, and 12% for the Ne X Ly-alpha line.
Context. The Crab nebula has been used as a celestial calibration source of the X-ray flux and spectral shape for many years by X-ray astronomy missions. However, the object is often too bright for current and future missions equipped with instruments with improved sensitivity. Aims. We use G21.5-0.9 as a viable, fainter substitute to the Crab, which is another pulsar-wind nebula with a time-constant powerlaw spectrum with a flux of a few milli Crab in the X-ray band. Using this source, we conduct a cross-calibration study of the instruments onboard currently active observatories: Chandra ACIS, Suzaku XIS, Swift XRT, XMM-Newton EPIC (MOS and pn) for the soft-band, and INTEGRAL IBIS-ISGRI, RXTE PCA, and Suzaku HXD-PIN for the hard band. Methods. We extract spectra from all the instruments and fit them under the same astrophysical assumptions. We compare the spectral parameters of the G21.5-0.9 model: power-law photon index, H-equivalent column density of the interstellar photoelectric absorption, flux in the soft (2-8 keV) or hard (15-50 keV) energy band. Results. We identify the systematic differences in the best-fit parameter values unattributable to the statistical scatter of the data alone. We interpret these differences as due to residual cross-calibration problems. The differences can be as large as 20% and 9% for the soft-band flux and power-law index, respectively, and 46% for the hard-band flux. The results are plotted and tabulated as a useful reference for future calibration and scientific studies using multiple missions.
We have observed the oxygen-rich SNR 1E 0102.2-7219 with the integral field spectrograph WiFeS at Siding Spring Observatory and discovered sulfur-rich ejecta for the first time. Follow-up deep DDT observations with MUSE on the VLT (8100 s on source) have led to the additional discovery of fast- moving hydrogen as well as argon-rich and chlorine-rich material. The detection of fast-moving hydrogen knots challenges the interpretation that the progenitor of 1E 0102 was a compact core of a Wolf-Rayet star that had shed its entire envelope. In addition to the detection of hydrogen and the products of oxygen-burning, this unprecedented sharp (0.2 spaxel size at ~0.7 seeing) and deep MUSE view of an oxygen-rich SNR in the Magellanic Clouds reveals further exciting discoveries, including [Fe xiv]{lambda}5303 and [Fe xi]{lambda}7892 emission, which we associate with the forward shock. We present this exciting data set and discuss some of its implications for the explosion mechanism and nucleosynthesis of the associated supernova.
On behalf of the International Astronomical Consortium for High Energy Calibration (IACHEC), we present results from the cross-calibration campaigns in 2012 on 3C 273 and in 2013 on PKS 2155-304 between the then active X-ray observatories Chandra, NuSTAR, Suzaku, Swift and XMM-Newton. We compare measured fluxes between instrument pairs in two energy bands, 1-5 keV and 3-7 keV and calculate an average cross-normalization constant for each energy range. We review known cross-calibration features and provide a series of tables and figures to be used for evaluating cross-normalization constants obtained from other observations with the above mentioned observatories.
We have analyzed the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory observations of the compact feature in the Small Magellanic Cloud supernova remnant (SNR) 1E 0102.2-7219 which has recently been suggested to be the Central Compact Object remaining after the supernova explosion. In our analysis, we have used appropriate, time-dependent responses for each of the archival observations, modeled the background instead of subtracting it, and have fit unbinned spectra to preserve the maximal spectral information. The spectrum of this feature is similar to the spectrum of the surrounding regions which have significantly enhanced abundances of O, Ne, & Mg. We find that the previously suggested blackbody model is inconsistent with the data as Monte Carlo simulations indicate that more than 99% of the simulated data sets have a test statistic value lower than that of the data. The spectrum is described adequately by a non-equilibrium ionization thermal model with two classes of models that fit the data equally well. One class of models has a temperature of $kTsim0.79$ keV, an ionization timescale of $sim3times10^{11},mathrm{cm}^{-3}mathrm{s}$, and marginal evidence for enhanced abundances of O and Ne and the other has a temperature of $kTsim0.91$ keV, an ionization timescale of $sim7times10^{10},mathrm{cm}^{-3}mathrm{s}$, and abundances consistent with local interstellar medium values. We also performed an image analysis and find that the spatial distribution of the counts is not consistent with that of a point source. The hypothesis of a point source distribution can be rejected at the 99.9% confidence level. Therefore this compact feature is most likely a knot of O and Ne rich ejecta associated with the reverse shock.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
