[Ne V] Imaging of N49 in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

We present sub-arcsecond imaging in [Ne V] of N49, the brightest optical SNR in the LMC. Between the "cool" optical and "hot" X-ray regimes, [Ne V] emission indicates intermediate temperatures for collisionally excited plasmas (2--6 x 10E5 K), for which imaging has been extremely limited. We compare the flux in these images to the O VI measured spectroscopically by FUSE in individual apertures and find dereddened line ratios that are reasonably consistent with our predictions for intermediate velocity shocks. The overall luminosity in [Ne V] for the entire remnant is 1.2E36 erg/s, which, given the measured line ratios, implies an overall O VI luminosity of 1.5E38 erg/s. These large radiative losses indicate that this material must have been shocked recently relative to the total lifetime of the remnant. We also explore the complex spatial structure. We find [Ne V] tracing the [O III] emission more closely than it does H-alpha, measure significant shifts (~0.1 pc) between the peaks of different emission lines, and find two orders of magnitude variations in the flux ratios for different filaments across the remnant. These properties as well as the general filamentary character of the optical emission suggest thermally unstable intermediate velocity shocks.