Janette Suherli

University of Manitoba

Janette is a PhD student at University of Manitoba, working with Dr. Samar Safi-Harb in the eXtreme Astrophysics Group. She studies the Central Compact Objects (CCOs), a puzzling class of young isolated neutron stars located near the geometrical centres of supernova remnants (SNRs) – the most famous example is the CCO in the SNR Cassiopeia A. To date, there are only about fifteen known CCOs and their natures are shrouded in mystery. CCOs have been dubbed as anti-magnetars given their relatively low surface dipole magnetic fields compared to those of magnetars. A particularly enigmatic property of CCOs is their lack of counterparts in any other wavelength; so far, they are exclusively detectable only in X-ray band. Understanding the nature of these objects would provide important clues about the diversity of supernovae and their aftermath.

Since its advent in the 1980s, integral field spectroscopy technique has been used by radio astronomers long before it was finally adopted in the optical regime. Integral field spectroscopy observation combines spectroscopic and imaging powers, meaning that for every individual spatial pixel there is a spectrum generated. Using this technique, astronomers are able to study astronomical objects in a novel and more effective way, especially for structurally complex objects. It has particularly revived SNRs research at optical wavelength within the past decade. Janette’s research work focuses on utilizing integral field spectroscopy in the optical regime, to shed light on the environment of CCOs, which in turn helps address the progenitors and CCO properties from a different perspective. Her research will open a new window into revealing the nature of CCOs outside of the X-ray regime.

Janette completed her undergraduate degree at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia and her Master’s studies at Wesleyan University, U.S.A.. Before pursuing her PhD studies at the University of Manitoba, Janette worked as a data analyst for Traveloka – a big Indonesian tech company – combating credit card fraud. Aside from doing research, Janette writes for Astrobites and volunteers at the University of Manitoba’s Lockhart Planetarium.

CXO J085201.4-461753, the CCO in the heart of Vela Jr. SNR (Aschenbach 1998; Pavlov et al. 2001), is the only CCO with a counterpart outside the X-ray band to date. We observed the central region of Vela Jr. SNR with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) mounted on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and presented the first spatially resolved maps of the emission nebula morphology (Suherli, Safi-Harb, et al. in prep.), ending a two-decades debate about this particular nebulosity (e.g. Pellizzoni et al. 2002; Mignani et al. 2007; Mignani et al. 2019). This figure shows the un-reddened flux maps of the main emission lines detected in the emission nebula, showing two distinct morphological types: kidney-bean-like shapes that resemble bow-shock nebulae and roughly-circular nebulae (image taken from Suherli, Safi-Harb, et al. in prep.). The red circles in the figure mark the position of the CCO and the overlaid white dotted-line contours are the [N II]λ6583 emission. We assume a distance of 1 kpc to Vela Jr. SNR for the scale and Star Z is a foreground star that was subtracted out in the image.