Toward a Complete Census of Galactic Supernova Remnants

A massive star ends its life by exploding violently as a supernova. After a supernova explosion, the debris left behind glows. This debris is called a supernova remnant (SNR). Compared to the short-duration flash of a supernova, SNRs last much longer, many thousands of years. Studying SNRs provides a window into the population of massive stars in a galaxy and the energy injected by them at the end of their lives. Despite their importance, the census of SNRs in the Milky Way is severely incomplete. This incompleteness is caused by difficulties locating Galactic SNRs in confusing parts of the Galaxy and a lack of sensitive data. The investigators will use new data sets to create a catalog of new SNRs across the Milky Way. They will expand the “West Virginia SPOT” program, which trains college STEM majors to give scientific presentations to public school children and then supports these presentations. In this program, they will develop a new feature SPOT presentation on SNRs. This research program is based on observations with the NSF’s Very Large Array (VLA) Radio Telescope, combined with space-based infrared observations and further enhanced by new radio continuum data from the South African MeerKAT telescope. SNRs are bright at radio wavelengths and can be distinguished from other types of objects using ancillary data. The researchers will verify the identified candidates using machine-learning, comparing the appearance of known SNRs with that of the SNR candidates. Based on previous searches and the results from a test field, this search is expected to double the known SNR population. This would bring the expected and known SNR populations close together and would provide a wealth of new objects for follow up studies. This project is jointly funded by the Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grants Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.