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Optical reconstruction of dust in the region of supernova remnant RX J1713.7−3946 from astrometric data

Nature Astronomy volume 5, pages 832–838 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The origin of the radiation observed in the region of the supernova remnant RX J1713.7−3946, one of the brightest TeV emitters, has been debated since its discovery. The existence of atomic and molecular clouds in this object supports the idea that part of the GeV gamma-ray emission in this region originates from proton–proton collisions. However, the observed column density of protons derived from observations of the gas cannot explain the whole emission. Yet there could be a fraction of protons contained in fainter structures that have not been detected so far. Here we search for faint objects in the line of sight of RX J1713.7−3946 using the principle of light extinction and the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission Data Release 2 astrometric and photometric data. We reveal and locate with precision a number of dust clouds and note that only one appears to be in the vicinity of RX J1713.7−3946. We estimate the embedded mass to be Mdust = (7.0 ± 0.6) × 103 M⊙, which might be big enough to contain the missing protons. Finally, using the fact that the supernova remnant is expected to be located in a dusty environment and that there appears to be only one such structure in the vicinity of RX J1713.7−3946, we set a very precise constraint on the supernova remnant distance, at 1.12 ± 0.01 kpc.

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Fig. 1: Measurement principle.
Fig. 2: Reconstructed G-band extinction in the direction of the SNR.
Fig. 3: Reconstructed G-band extinction in the direction of the SNR, overlaid on HESS contours of the SNR for photons with energy >2 TeV.
Fig. 4: Reconstructed G-band extinction in two distance ranges.

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Data availability

The data used for our reconstruction are available from ref. 24. The results of our reconstruction is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4462826. The dataset consists of six approximate posterior samples over the whole reconstruction volume in Cartesian coordinates.

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Acknowledgements

This research has made use of public data from the HESS telescope https://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/hfm/HESS/pages/dl3-dr1/. We gratefully acknowledge the NANTEN team, for sharing gas data in our region of interest. A.K.-M. acknowledges the support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through grants PTDC/FIS-AST/31546/2017 and UID/FIS/00099/2013. This work has made use of data from the ESA mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. A.K.-M. is a member of the Gaia DPAC.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Garching, Germany

    R. Leike & M. Glatzle

  2. Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Munich, Germany

    R. Leike

  3. Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università La Sapienza di Roma, Rome, Italy

    S. Celli

  4. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Rome, Italy

    S. Celli

  5. Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    A. Krone-Martins

  6. CENTRA/SIM, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    A. Krone-Martins

  7. School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    C. Boehm

  8. Physik-Department, Technische Universität München, Garching, Germany

    M. Glatzle

  9. Department of Astrophysics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Y. Fukui & H. Sano

  10. National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Japan

    H. Sano

  11. School of Physical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    G. Rowell

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Contributions

The idea was proposed by C.B. and developed with S.C. and A.K.-M. R.L. developed and applied the entire method, wrote the Methods section and contributed to the text of the manuscript. S.C. wrote large parts of the manuscript and helped to review and understand the results of the method. A.K.-M. and C.B. wrote substantial parts of the manuscript and helped to review and understand the results of the method. M.G. provided code and numerical advice regarding the method and helped to review the manuscript. Y.F. and H.S. contributed ISM data and helped to review the manuscript. G.R. contributed to the data and helped to review the manuscript and understand the results.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to R. Leike or S. Celli.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Astronomy thanks Fabio Acero and Naomi Tsuji for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Fig. 1.

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Leike, R., Celli, S., Krone-Martins, A. et al. Optical reconstruction of dust in the region of supernova remnant RX J1713.7−3946 from astrometric data. Nat Astron 5, 832–838 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01344-w

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