The distribution of SNRs with Galactocentric radius

Abstract

In order to determine the Galactic distribution of supernova remnants (SNRs) there are two main difficulties: (i) there are selection effects which mean that catalogues of SNRs are not complete, and (ii) distances are not available for most SNRs, so distance estimates from the `Sigma-D' relation are used. Here I compare the observed distribution of 69 `bright' SNRs with Galactic longitude with that expected from the projection of various model Galactocentric radius distributions. This does not require distances from the `Sigma-D' relation, and selecting only `bright' remnants aims to avoid major issues with the selection effects. Although this method does not provide a direct inversion to the 3-D distribution of SNRs in the Galaxy, it does provide useful constraints on the Galactocentric radius distribution. For a combined power-law/exponential model for SNR surface density variation with Galactocentric radius, the best fitted distributions are more concentrated towards lower radii than the distribution derived by Case & Bhattacharya.