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Session 75 - The Crab Nebula.
Display session, Thursday, June 13
Great Hall,

[75.01] Testing for Products of Oxygen Burning in the Crab Nebula

L. -G. Strolger, G. M. MacAlpine (U. Mich.)

It has recently been suggested (MacAlpine et al. 1996, ApJ, 463) that the Crab Nebula contains a large amount of asymmetrically distributed gas which is significantly enriched with products of oxygen burning (e.g., silicon, sulfur and argon). If this is correct, then those filaments with unusually strong [S II] \lambda\lambda6716, 6731 emission should also exhibit enhanced [Ar III] \lambda7136 lines. In addition, infrared fine-structure lines like [Si II] 34.8 \micron\ could be expected to lower the gas temperature, below that of other filaments. Using long-slit spectroscopy obtained in December, 1995 at the 2.4m Hiltner telescope of the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT Observatory, we have derived new measurements which appear to support the above inferences.

Program listing for Thursday