Runaway O-star bow shocks as particle accelerators? The case of AE Aur revisited. (2019)
Keywords :
Runaway stars ; Stellar bow shocks ; Particle astrophysics ; Massive stars ; X-ray astronomy
Abstract:We present results of our Chandra/ACIS observations of the field centered on the fast, runaway O star AE Aur and its bow shock. Previous XMM-Newton observations revealed an X-ray "blob" near the IR arc tracing the bow shock, possibly a nonthermal source consistent with models of Inverse Compton scattering of dust IR photons by electrons accelerated at the shock. The new, subarcsecond-resolution Chandra data, while confirming the presence of the XMM-Newton source, clearly indicate that the latter is neither extended nor coincident with the IR arc and strongly suggest it is a background active galactic nucleus. Motivated by results published for the bow shock of BD+43{deg}3654, we extended our study to the radio domain by analyzing
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We carried out a campaign to observe the region of AE Aur with
Chandra. The program (PI: B. Rangelov) was split into five
observations totaling 140.53 ks exposure over a two-month period. The
first data set was taken on 2016 December 16 (ObsID 19943; 14.88 ks),
followed by 2016 December 17 (ObsID 19445; 44.49 ks), 2017 January 3
(ObsID 19979; 26.72 ks), 2017 January 4 (ObsID 19941; 26.72 ks), and
2017 January 6 (ObsID 19951; 27.72 ks). All data were taken with the
ACIS-I instrument operated in "VeryFaint" Timed exposure mode.
The data have been restricted to the energy range between 0.3 and 7keV
and filtered in three energy bands: 0.3-1.2keV (soft), 1.2-2keV
(medium), and 2-7keV (hard).
We detected a total of 114 X-ray sources in the merged data.
We used archival data from XMM-Newton (PI: F. Damiani,
ObsID 0206360101) with a total exposure time of 58.9ks.
See Section 2.2.
The region of AE Aur has been observed with the EVLA in the C band in
2013 (B configuration; project 13B-212; PI C. Peri), as well as in the
L band in 2016 (C configuration; project 16A-152; PI C. Peri).
See Section 3.5.
- B/chandra : The Chandra Archive Log (CXC, 1999-2014)
- B/xmm : XMM-Newton Obs. Log (XMM-Newton Science Operation Center, 2012-)
- B/gcvs : General Catalogue of Variable Stars (Samus+, 2007-2017)
- B/vsx : AAVSO International Variable Star Index VSX (Watson+, 2006-)
- I/284 : The USNO-B1.0 Catalog (Monet+ 2003)
- II/246 : 2MASS All-Sky Catalog of Point Sources (Cutri+ 2003)
- II/328 : AllWISE Data Release (Cutri+ 2013)
- J/A+A/331/949 : Wolf-Rayet and O-star runaways kinematics (Moffat+ 1998)
- J/ApJS/117/361 : PNe in NRAO VLA Sky Survey (Condon+ 1998)
- J/ApJS/169/401 : ChaMP X-ray point source catalog (Kim+, 2007)
- J/A+A/493/339 : XMM-Newton serendipitous Survey. V. (Watson+, 2009)
- J/MNRAS/410/190 : Young runaway stars within 3kpc (Tetzlaff+, 2011)
- J/A+A/578/A45 : E-BOSS. II. Catalogue second release (Peri+, 2015)
- J/ApJ/827/96 : WISE census of YSOs in Canis Major (Fischer+, 2016)
- J/A+A/594/A116 : HI4PI spectra and column density maps (HI4PI team+, 2016)
- J/A+A/612/A3 : HESS Galactic supernova remnants (Hess+, 2018)
- J/AJ/157/176 : X-ray emission from Gal. stellar bow shocks (Binder+, 2019)
- J/AN/341/645 : AE Aur and iota Ori runaway stars RV curves (Heyne+, 2020)
