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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 1(806), p. L19, 2015

DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/806/1/l19

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The Destruction of the Circumstellar Ring of Sn 1987a

Journal article published in 2015 by Claes Fransson ORCID, Josefin Larsson ORCID, Katia Migotto ORCID, Dominic Pesce ORCID, Peter Challis, Roger A. Chevalier ORCID, Kevin France ORCID, Robert P. Kirshner, Bruno Leibundgut ORCID, Peter Lundqvist ORCID, Richard McCray ORCID, Jason Spyromilio ORCID, Francesco Taddia, Anders Jerkstrand ORCID, Seppo Mattila and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We present imaging and spectroscopic observations with HST and VLT of the ring of SN 1987A from 1994 to 2014. After an almost exponential increase of the shocked emission from the hotspots up to day ~8,000 (~2009), both this and the unshocked emission are now fading. From the radial positions of the hotspots we see an acceleration of these up to 500-1000 km/s, consistent with the highest spectroscopic shock velocities from the radiative shocks. In the most recent observations (2013 and 2014), we find several new hotspots outside the inner ring, excited by either X-rays from the shocks or by direct shock interaction. All of these observations indicate that the interaction with the supernova ejecta is now gradually dissolving the hotspots. We predict, based on the observed decay, that the inner ring will be destroyed by ~2025. ; Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for ApJ Letters