An optical search for Supernova Remnants in NGC 3184 and NGC 2903

Abstract

In this work, we present the results of an optical search for Supernova Remnants (SNRs) in the spiral galaxies NGC3184 and NGC2903. The SNR identification technique consisted of constructing continuum-subtracted H-alpha and [SII] lambda lambda 6716,6731 images and then using [SII] / H-alpha ratios obtained from the image. The SNR candidates are normally identified as nebulae that have [SII] / H-alpha ratios > 0.4 compared with HII regions < 0.2. Our list of candidates contains 29 objects in NGC3184 and 10 objects in NGC2903. We compare our SNR candidate list against the existing X-ray and radio observations of the two galaxies. Knowing the positions of the SNRs, we can compare their distributions relative to FIII regions and spiral arms. From these distributions, we can investigate such properties of possible SNR progenitors as their parent stellar populations and supernova types. These observations were performed with the 1.5m Russian-TurkishTelescope (RTT) Spectrograph TFOSC's (TUG Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera) CCD imaging system using narrowband interference filters at Turkish National Observatory (TUG) in March 2006.