Modeling SuperNova Radiation

Brian Cho

Ever since Galactic Cosmic Rays were detected by Victor Hess 100 years ago (Hess 1912), their origin has been a mystery; what stellar object is powerful enough to accelerate particles into TeV energy ranges, and how does it release so much of them? Galactic Cosmic Rays are capable of releasing high energy X-rays and gamma rays, with energies up to GeV, as they travel through the interstellar medium. By studying the spectral patterns of the emitted X-rays and gamma rays, we can gain insight into the nature of the Cosmic rays themselves. To record such patterns, astronomers have used the Chandra telescope and the Very Large Array telescope to create high-resolution X-ray images of some sources of Cosmic rays. However, the low energy band of these preexisting telescopes has limited our ability to detect high-energy X-ray emissions from the sources and to gain further understanding of their particle acceleration mechanisms (Reynolds 2008). But with the recently launched Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), it is now possible to record these high-energy spectrum data with high resolution.