Vol. 554
In section 6. Interstellar and circumstellar matter

The most complete and detailed X-ray view of the SNR Puppis A

The southern supernova remnant, Puppis A, has for decades been a benchmark object for studies of the interaction between the expanding ejecta and the interstellar medium. Its expansion age is about 4500 years, making it a potentially historically recorded event, at a distance of about 2 kpc. The remnant has been studied across the entire spectrum, from GeV to radio. This paper presents the most complete and definitive reconstruction of the X-ray emission from the remnant using new and archival XMM/Newton and archival Chandra observations (covering the interval 0.3-8 keV with a spatial resolution of 10 arcsec. These observations also present the first complete spectral energy distribution covering the entire panchromatic data. The spectacular view of the barrel-shaped remnant details the interaction with the interstellar medium, a part of which contains the disintegrated debris of a previous encounter with an ambient molecular cloud and another part of which shows the effects of a still-continuing collision. The cellular structure of the surface of the remnant recalls similar multidimensional structures observed in detonation fronts and is different from younger remnants (e.g. Cas A, Tycho, and Kepler) that also lack internal pulsar winds. The present study is a major contribution to a small but growing number of deep multiwavelength-imaged Galactic SNRs. There is more to come, the authors promise a more extensive modeling study.