Astron. Astrophys. 364, 732-740 (2000)

1. Introduction

Recently, Aschenbach (1998) reported the discovery of a young supernova remnant (SNR) - designated RX J0852.0-4622 - from high-energy X-ray data from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey. This new SNR appears near the southeastern boundary of the Vela remnant (e.g. Milne 1995; Aschenbach et al. 1995; Duncan et al. 1996), appearing in X-rays (with 1.3 keV) as a nearly circular "ring" approximately in angular diameter. Around the circumference of this ring are a number of enhancements in the X-ray emission, the most prominent of which appears near the northwestern perimeter. The available X-ray and -ray data show the remnant to be comparatively young, with an age of  yr (Iyudin et al. 1998; Aschenbach et al. 1999).

Following from this X-ray detection, Combi et al. (1999) reported a radio detection of the SNR from the 2.42-GHz data of Duncan et al. (1995). These authors present spatially filtered data from the Parkes 2.42-GHz survey, along with results obtained from the 30-m Villa Elisa telescope at 1.42 GHz (beamwidth ).

The possibility of providing a more accurate age for this remnant was raised by Burgess & Zuber (2000), who present a re-analysis of nitrate abundance data from an Antarctic ice core. These authors find evidence for a nearby Galactic SN years ago, in addition to the known historical supernovae (e.g. Clark & Stephenson 1977), although it is not possible to link this new SN definitively with RX J0852.0-4622.

In this paper, we examine three sets of radio continuum data from the Parkes telescope, at frequencies of 1.40, 2.42 and 4.85 GHz. We use these data to further investigate the radio structure of RX J0852.0-4622. Implications of the radio characteristics of this remnant for statistical studies of SNRs are then considered.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2000

Online publication: January 29, 2001
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