[SN, SNR, and Isolated NS -- Oral ]
A Half-Megasecond Chandra Observation of the Oxygen-rich Supernova
Remnant G292.0+1.8
Jae-Joon Lee, Pennsylvania State Univ.
Sangwook Park (Pennsylvania State Univ.), John Hughes (Rutgers), Patrick Slane (SAO), Bryan Gaensler (University of Sydney), Parviz Ghavamian (STScI), David Burrows (Pennsylvania State Univ.)
Our Chandra Large Project of the Galactic O-rich SNR G292.0+1.8
is one of the highlights for the core-collapse SNR studies in the 10-yr
legacy of Chandra. We review the early results and report on the recent
progress on our analysis of a deep 510 ks Chandra observation. G292.0+1.8
is a textbook example of remnants of core-collapse super novae, hovering
a pulsar (J1124-5916) and a pulsar wind nebula, the reverse-shocked
metal-rich ejecta material, and the shocked circumstellar wind. The
X-ray characteristics of the shocked circumstellar wind shows that the
progenitor star had experienced a massive mass loss during its late-stage
evolution. A highly nonuniform distribution of thermodynamic conditions
of the X-ray-emitting ejecta features suggest that the explosion was
likely aspherical. We further reveal spectacular substructures of a
torus, a jet, and an extended central compact nebula, all associated
with the embedded pulsar. The observation shows a consistent picture of
late-stage evolution of massive star, where it loses a significant
amount of its initial mass as stellar wind and undergoes an aspheric
explosion to leave a neutron star with high spatial velocity.