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The possible detection of a compact object in the remnant of SN 1987A presents an unprecedented opportunity to follow its early evolution. The suspected detection stems from an excess of infrared emission from a dust blob near the compact objects predicted position. The infrared excess could be due to the decay of isotopes like 44Ti, accretion luminosity from a neutron star or black hole, magnetospheric emission or a wind originating from the spindown of a pulsar, or thermal emission from an embedded, cooling neutron star (NS 1987A). It is shown that the last possibility is the most plausible as the other explanations are disfavored by other observations and/or require fine-tuning of parameters. Not only are there indications the dust blob overlaps the predicted location of a kicked compact remnant, but its excess luminosity also matches the expected thermal power of a 30 year old neutron star. Furthermore, models of cooling neutron stars within the Minimal Cooling paradigm readily fit both NS 1987A and Cas A, the next-youngest known neutron star. If correct, a long heat transport timescale in the crust and a large effective stellar temperature are favored, implying relatively limited crustal n-1S0 superfluidity and an envelope with a thick layer of light elements, respectively. If the locations dont overlap, then pulsar spindown or accretion might be more likely, but the pulsars period and magnetic field or the accretion rate must be rather finely tuned. In this case, NS 1987A may have enhanced cooling and/or a heavy-element envelope.
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Handed the baton from ROSAT, early observations of SN 1987A with the Chandra HETG and the XMM-Newton RGS showed broad lines with a FWHM of 10^4 km/s: the SN blast wave was continuing to shock the H II region around SN 1987A. Since then, its picturesque equatorial ring (ER) has been shocked, giving rise to a growing, dominant narrow-lined component. Even so, current HETG and RGS observations show that a broad component is still present and contributes 20% of the 0.5--2 keV flux. SN 1987As X-ray behavior can be modeled with a minimum of free parameters as the sum of two simple 1D hydrodynamic simulations: i) an on-going interaction with H II region material producing the broad emission lines and most of the 3--10 keV flux, and ii) an interaction with the dense, clumpy ER material that dominates the 0.5--2 keV flux. Toward the future, we predict a continued growth of the broad component but a drop in the 0.5--2 keV flux, once no new dense ER material is being shocked. When? Time, and new data, will tell.
Both CO and SiO have been observed at early and late phases in SN 1987A. H_2 was predicted to form at roughly the same time as these molecules, but was not detected at early epochs. Here we report the detection of NIR lines from H_2 at 2.12 mu and 2.40 mu in VLT/SINFONI spectra obtained between days 6489 and 10,120. The emission is concentrated to the core of the supernova in contrast to H-alpha and approximately coincides with the [Si I]/[Fe II] emission detected previously in the ejecta. Different excitation mechanisms and power sources of the emission are discussed. From the nearly constant H_2 luminosities we favour excitation resulting from the 44Ti decay.
The smallest of the four detectors which claim to have observed neutrinos from SN 1987a registered the events more than 4 h earlier than the other three ones. This claim is not usually accepted because it is difficult to understand that the other (and larger) detectors did not register any events at the same time. It is shown that microlensing of the neutrinos by a star in-between the supernova (SN) and Earth can enhance the neutrino intensity at the position of one detector by more than an order of magnitude with respect to the other detectors. Such a configuration is improbable but not impossible. Essential for this enhancement is the small source diameter, of order 100 km. So if two bursts of neutrinos were emitted by SN 1987a at a separation of about 4 h it could be explained easily that the smallest detector observed the first burst while the other ones missed it and vice versa.
Astrophysical shocks at all scales, from those in the heliosphere up to the cosmological shock waves, are typically collisionless, because the thickness of their jump region is much shorter than the collisional mean free path. Across these jumps, electrons, protons, and ions are expected to be heated at different temperatures. Supernova remnants (SNRs) are ideal targets to study collisionless processes because of their bright post-shock emission and fast shocks. Although optical observations of Balmer-dominated shocks in young SNRs showed that the post-shock proton temperature is higher than the electron temperature, the actual dependence of the post-shock temperature on the particle mass is still widely debated. We tackle this longstanding issue through the analysis of deep multi-epoch and high-resolution observations of the youngest nearby supernova remnant, SN 1987A, made with the Chandra X-ray telescope. We introduce a novel data analysis method by studying the observed spectra in close comparison with a dedicated full 3-D hydrodynamic simulation. The simulation is able to reproduce self-consistently the whole broadening of the spectral lines of many ions altogether. We can therefore measure the post shock temperature of protons and selected ions through comparison of the model with observations. We have obtained information about the heating processes in collisional shocks by finding that the ion to proton temperature ratio is always significantly higher than one and increases linearly with the ion mass for a wide range of masses and shock parameters.
We present imaging and spectroscopic observations with HST and VLT 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 ~8,000 (~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, 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.
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