Natal molecular cloud of SNR Kes 41. Complete characterisation

¹ CONICET–Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio (IAFE), Buenos Aires, Argentina
e-mail: lsupan@iafe.uba.ar
² Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
³ School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
⁴ Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, UK
⁵ School of Computing Enginnering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Locked Bay 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia

Received: 6 April 2018
Accepted: 13 August 2018

Abstract

Using high-resolution data of the ¹²CO and ¹³CO (J = 1–0) line emission from the Mopra Southern Galactic Plane CO Survey in conjunction with neutral hydrogen observations from the Southern Galactic Plane Survey (SGPS) and mid-infrared Spitzer data, we have explored the large-scale environment of the supernova remnant Kes 41. On the basis of these data, we identified for the first time the parent cloud of Kes 41 in its whole extension and surveyed the HII regions, masers, and the population of massive young stellar objects in the cloud. The whole unveiled giant cloud, located at the kinematic distance of 12.0 ± 3.6 kpc, whose average total mass and size are ~10–30 × 10⁵ M_⊙ and ~ 26′, also shines in γ-rays, as revealed by the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi satellite. We determined a high average proton density ~500–1000 cm⁻³ in the large molecular complex, of which protons from the neutral atomic and ionised gases comprise only ~15%.