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Session 49 - Galactic Radioactivity, 26A1 & Solar System Origin.
Oral session, Wednesday, June 11
North Main Hall F/G,
^26Al is ejected into the interstellar medium by a variety of candidate nucleosynthesis events, and can be detected from there through its radioactive-decay gamma-rays at 1809 keV. Different event types are expected to encript different spatial signatures into the apparent appearance of the 1809 keV sky, which reflects the integrated contributions to ^26Al production during the one-million year radioactive decay time. Several space instruments have detected the 1809 keV signal, and imaging data with a few degrees resolution are available from the COMPTEL telescope on the Compton observatory. With these data, ^26Al production sites in the Galaxy can be constrained, resulting in massive-star origin as most plausible source. This talk presents the expected signature of interstellar ^26Al, discussed the different observations and the significance of their constraints, and presents the astrophysical conclusions on the nature of ^26Al sources in the Galaxy.
