The extended hard X-ray emission from the Vela Plerion

Free access article

Issue		A&A Volume 436, Number 3, June IV 2005


Page(s)		917 - 923
Section		Interstellar and circumstellar matter
DOI		http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20042367

A&A 436, 917-923 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20042367

The extended hard X-ray emission from the Vela Plerion

V. Mangano¹, E. Massaro², F. Bocchino³, T. Mineo¹ and G. Cusumano¹

¹ Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica - Sezione di Palermo, IASF-CNR, via Ugo La Malfa 153, 90146 Palermo, Italy
e-mail: vanessa@pa.iasf.cnr.it
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università La Sapienza, Piazzale A. Moro 2, 00185 Roma, Italy
³ INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo, Piazza dei Normanni 1, 90100 Palermo, Italy

(Received 15 November 2004 / Accepted 6 February 2005 )

Abstract
We present the results of a broad band (3-200 keV) spectral analysis of BeppoSAX and XMM-Newton observations of the Vela plerion. The hard X-ray (>15 keV) emission is found to be extended over a region of 12'-15' radius, corresponding to a size of about 1.0-1.3 pc for a source distance of 290 pc. A single power law does not give an acceptable fit while a broken power law or a log-parabolic law nicely fit the data. The former spectral model has the photon index $\Gamma_1 = 1.66\pm0.01$ for energies lower than the break value equal to 12.5 keV and the index $\Gamma_2 = 2.01\pm0.05$ up to about 200 keV. The total X-ray luminosity of the Vela plerion is $L_{\rm X}=5.5\times10^{33}$ erg s^-1, which implies a conversion factor of the spin-down power of ~10^-3.

Key words: stars: pulsars: general -- shock waves -- ISM: supernova remnants -- ISM: individual object: Vela PWN -- X-rays: general

SIMBAD Objects

What is OpenURL?

The OpenURL standard is a protocol for transmission of metadata describing the resource that you wish to access. An OpenURL link contains article metadata and directs it to the OpenURL server of your choice. The OpenURL server can provide access to the resource and also offer complementary services (specific search engine, export of references...). The OpenURL link can be generated by different means.

If your librarian has set up your subscription with an OpenURL resolver, OpenURL links appear automatically on the abstract pages.
You can define your own OpenURL resolver with your EDPS Account. In this case your choice will be given priority over that of your library.
You can use an add-on for your browser (Firefox or I.E.) to display OpenURL links on a page (see http://www.openly.com/openurlref/). You should disable this module if you wish to use the OpenURL server that you or your library have defined.