Smoking Supernovae

Abstract

The question "Are supernovae important sources of dust?" is a contentious one. Observations with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) and the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) only detected very small amounts of hot dust in supernova remnants. Here, we review observations of two young Galactic remnants with the Submillimetre Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA), which imply that large quantities of dust are produced by supernovae. The association of dust with the Cassiopeia A remnant is in question due to the contamination of foreground material. In this article, we compare the emission from cold dust with CO emission towards Kepler's supernova remnant. We detect very little CO at the location of the submillimetre peaks. A comparison of masses from the CO and the dust clouds are made, and we estimate the 3 sigma upper limit on the gas-to-dust ratios to range from 25 - 65 suggesting that we cannot yet rule out freshly-formed or swept up circumstellar dust in Kepler's supernova remnant.

19 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in International Journal of Astrobiology

References in corpus (18)

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• A Deep Sub-millimeter Survey of Lensing Clusters: A New Window on Galaxy Formation and Evolution
• Dust Formation in Primordial Type II Supernovae
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• The Origin of Cosmic Dust
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• Effects of dust grains on early galaxy evolution
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• No cold dust within the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A
• Cold Dust in Kepler's Supernova Remnant
• The Detection of Cold Dust in Cas A: Evidence for the Formation of Metallic Needles in the Ejecta
• SCUBA Observations of MAMBO Sources
• An Improved Estimate of the Mass of Dust in Cassiopeia A
• Pair loading in Gamma-Ray Burst Fireball And Prompt Emission From Pair-Rich Reverse Shock
• Iron Needles in Supernova Remnants?

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Accounting for the Foreground Contribution to the Dust Emission towards Kepler's Supernova Remnant
• On the Absorption Properties of Metallic Needles