Specific Star Forming Regions -- Poster Presentation
Investigation of Diffuse X-ray Emission in the Massive Star
Forming Region NGC 6334 with Chandra and Future Prospects with Astro-E2
Yuichiro Ezoe, ISAS/JAXA
Motohide Kokubun (University of Tokyo), Kazuo Makishima (University of Tokyo)
Recent studies with Chandra have been revealing that there are
various diffuse X-ray emission originated from 10$^{6-7}$ K plasma or
possible accelerated particles in massive star forming regions (e.g.,
Wolk et al. 2002, Townsley et al. 2003). We analyzed Chandra data of the
representative massive star-forming region NGC 6334 where hard X-ray
emission have been detected with ASCA (Sekimoto et al. 2000). In addition
to 800 point sources, we found diffuse X-ray emission (5x9 pc and 2e33
erg/s in the 0.5-8 keV luminosity). It shows positionally different
spectra; thermal plasma emission of several keV in low absorption
regions, while flat continua in dense cloud cores. The former emission
can be explained by hot plasma heated at strong shocks of fast stellar-winds
from young OB stars, while the latter by accelerated particles at the
shock. We then roughly estimated possible contribution of diffuse X-ray
emission in Galactic massive star forming regions to the puzzling
Galactic Ridge X-ray emission (e.g., Kaneda et al. 1997) as $\sim10$\%
in luminosity. Related to this issue, we show potential importance of
simultaneous observation with Chandra and, the Japanese new X-ray
observatory, Astro-E2.