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D.C.-J. Bock, M.C.H. Wright (UC Berkeley), D.A. Frail (NRAO), B.M. Gaensler (MIT), D.J. Wilner (SAO)
The discovery of OH (1720 MHz) masers in supernova remnants (SNRs) provides us with a convenient method for identifying promising candidates for studies of SNR/molecular cloud interactions. One remnant which is an ideal subject is 3C391. Here, single dish observations reveal a myriad of molecular lines from a giant shocked cloud at the blast-wave of the remnant.
We present recent millimeter-wave observations of 3C391 with the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) array. We have imaged the region towards the OH maser in HCN (J=1--0) and HCO+ (J=1--0) at a resolution of 4 arcsec. The morphology and brightness of the emission in HCO+ and HCN are similar; we resolve the shocked cloud seen by Frail and Mitchell (1998) into several clumps of characteristic size 10 arcsec. The maser is midway between two of these clumps, rather than being coincident with the peak column density. The clumps all have similar spectra with line-widths of ~30~km~s-1, although there is evidence for a velocity gradient between the clumps. We examine the physical conditions of the shocked environment and discuss the relative abundances of the molecules. A companion study of the interaction between the SNR W51C and an associated molecular cloud is underway.
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