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[39.02] An Updated Analysis of Chandra Observations of the Eastern Limb of the Vela SNR

P.P. Plucinsky, R.K. Smith, R.J. Edgar, T.J. Gaetz, P.O. Slane (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), W.P. Blair (Johns Hopkins University)

We present an updated analysis of two Chandra/ACIS observations of the so-called Vela ``Bullet D'' region on the eastern limb of the Vela supernova remnant. The Bullet D region is a bright X-ray feature, identified by Aschenbach et al. from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey, which protrudes beyond the blast wave on the east side of the remnant. It has been suggested that this feature is a fragment of supernova ejecta which is just now pushing beyond the position of the main blast wave. An alternate explanation is that the feature is a ``break-out'' of the shock in which inhomogeneities in the ambient medium cause the shock to be non-spherical. The Chandra analysis has been updated to account for the spatially non-uniform contamination layer on the ACIS instrument. We will use the imaging and spectral capabilities of the Chandra/ACIS instrument to distinguish between these competing explanations.

This work was supported in part by NASA contract NAS8-03060 and NASA grant GO0-1127X.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.