Starship Asterisk*

HEAPOW: TeraVolt SNR (2019 Oct 21)

Using emission produced by particles traveling faster than the speed of light in air, ground-based telescopes have produced an historic first image of a supernova at tera-electron volt, or TeV, energies. The High Energy Stereoscopic System, or H.E.S.S., project, uses an array of ground-based telescopes (located in Namibia) to record the Cherenkov radiation produced when charged particles from an astrophysical source pass through the atmosphere at speeds faster than that of light, producing a "photonic boom". The image above shows emission produced as TeV photons from the supernova remnant (known as SNR RX J1713.7-3946) enter the atmosphere. Contours on the TeV image show X-ray emission from the SNR, and there's a good correlation between the TeV and X-ray image. The TeV image gives further credence to the idea that supernova remnants are sources of high-energy galactic cosmic rays.