Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter eROSITA

Tuesday, 13 September 2022, 16:08   (SFG 0140 / virtual eROSITA)

Characterizing thermal and nonthermal X-ray emission in the Vela supernova remnant with SRG/eROSITA

Martin Mayer (1), W. Becker (1), P. Predehl (1), M. Sasaki (2)
(1) Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik Garching, (2) Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

The Vela supernova remnant (SNR) is one of the most nearby and extended objects in the X-ray sky. It exhibits bright thermal emission from its shell, and synchrotron emission originating from the plerion of its central pulsar. Together, these make it an ideal target for studying an evolved core-collapse SNR, at a level of detail which would be unattainable for similar but more distant objects. During its first four all-sky surveys, the SRG/eROSITA instrument has accumulated an X-ray dataset of Vela which exhibits a much higher sensitivity and spectral resolving power than the data gathered by its predecessor ROSAT. This permits, for the first time, to disentangle and characterize the separate contributions from thermal and nonthermal emission across the SNR. In this contribution, we will introduce the results of a detailed spectro-imaging analysis of the Vela SNR, carried out with the eROSITA dataset. We will present the complex, strongly energy-dependent morphology of Vela discovered in multi-band imaging of the remnant. Furthermore, we will discuss the rich structure in foreground absorption, plasma temperature, and elemental abundances throughout Vela, revealed by our detailed spectroscopic analysis. Finally, we will present the unprecedented view of the extent of nonthermal X-ray emission from the Vela X plerion, which we find to be much larger than previously known.