Optical reconstruction of dust in the region of SNR RX J1713.7-3946 from astrometric data

Abstract

The origin of the radiation observed in the region of the supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946, one of the brightest TeV emitters, has been debated since its discovery. The existence of atomic and molecular clouds in this object supports the idea that part of the GeV gamma rays in this region originate from proton-proton collisions. However, the observed column density of protons derived from gas observations cannot explain the whole emission. Yet there could be a fraction of protons contained in fainter structures that have note been detected so far. Here we search for faint objects in the line of sight of RX J1713.7-3946 using the principle of light extinction and the ESA/Gaia DR2 astrometric and photometric data. We reveal and locate with precision a number of dust clouds and note that only one appears to be in the vicinity of RX J1713.7-3946. We estimate the embedded mass to $M_{dust}=(7.0\pm 0.6)\times 10^3{M}_{\odot }$ which might be big enough to contain the missing protons. Finally, using the fact that the supernova remnant is expected to be located in a dusty environment and that there appears to be only one such structure in the vicinity of RX J1713.7-3946, we set a very precise constrain to the supernova remnant distance, at ($1.12\pm 0.01$) kpc.

References in corpus (5)

• The Optical to Mid-Infrared Extinction Law Based on the APOGEE, Gaia DR2, Pan-STARRS1, SDSS, APASS, 2MASS and WISE Surveys
• Observations of the young supernova remnant RX J1713.7-3946 with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Resolving nearby dust clouds
• Hadronic gamma-rays from RX J1713.7-3946?
• Mid-infrared extinction and fresh silicate dust towards the Galactic Center

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• Gaia Focused Product Release: A catalogue of sources around quasars to search for strongly lensed quasars
• New method for estimating molecular cloud distances based on Gaia, 2MASS, and the TRILEGAL galaxy model
• Possible Detection of X-Ray Emitting Circumstellar Material in the Synchrotron-Dominated Supernova Remnant RX J 1713.7-3946
• Survival of Molecular Complexity under Recent Supernova Feedback: Detection of Hot Cores in RX J1713.7-3946