Rest Armin, Suntzeff Nicholas B, Olsen Knut, Prieto Jose Luis, Smith R Chris, Welch Douglas L, Becker Andrew, Bergmann Marcel, Clocchiatti Alejandro, Cook Kem, Garg Arti, Huber Mark, Miknaitis Gajus, Minniti Dante, Nikolaev Sergei, Stubbs Christopher
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, La Serena, Chile.
Nature. 2005 Dec 22;438(7071):1132-4. doi: 10.1038/nature04365.
The light from historical supernovae could in principle still be visible as scattered-light echoes centuries after the explosion. The detection of light echoes could allow us to pinpoint the supernova event both in position and age and, most importantly, permit the acquisition of spectra to determine the 'type' of the supernova centuries after the direct light from the explosion first reached Earth. Although echoes have been discovered around some nearby extragalactic supernovae, targeted searches have not found any echoes in the regions of historical Galactic supernovae. Here we report three faint variable-surface-brightness complexes with high apparent proper motions pointing back to three of the six smallest (and probably youngest) previously catalogued supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which are believed to have been thermonuclear (type Ia) supernovae. Using the distance and apparent proper motions of these echo arcs, we estimate ages of 610 and 410 years for two of them.
从原理上讲，历史超新星爆发产生的光在爆炸后的几个世纪里仍可能以散射光回波的形式被观测到。探测光回波能够让我们在位置和年代上确定超新星事件，最重要的是，在爆炸产生的直接光首次抵达地球几个世纪后，还能获取光谱以确定超新星的“类型”。尽管在一些邻近的河外超新星周围已经发现了回波，但针对历史上银河系超新星区域的定向搜索尚未找到任何回波。在此，我们报告了三个表面亮度微弱且变化的复合体，它们具有高视向自行，指向大麦哲伦星系中先前编目的六个最小（可能也是最年轻）超新星遗迹中的三个，据信这些超新星遗迹是热核（Ia型）超新星。利用这些回波弧的距离和视向自行，我们估计其中两个的年龄分别为610年和410年。
