Description
In the attempt to identify very young galactic supernova remnants (SNRs), 290 known compact (<2') galactic plane radio sources were observed at 20cm using the VLA in its 36 km configuration. The VLA observations described could detect supernovae with diameters between 5 and 20"; these would have an age of between 25 and 100 yr. Compact structure was detected in 168 (58%) of the 290 different sources observed; 73 sources (25%) were unresolved or slightly resolved point sources, 21 (7%) were single-well resolved, 56 (19%) were double, 18 (6%) were triple or complex. The large scale structure was completely resolved out for 122 (42%) of sources. Additional observations at 6cm with the VLA in the 11 km configuration were made of 14 sources with apparent shell structures that might have been characteristic of young SNRs. Low resolution observations were made at 20cm of 62 fields where the source was completely resolved out in the high resolution images. Only one source, G25.5+0.2, is a possible very young SNR. New H66_alpha recombination line observations place severe constrains on any thermal interpretation for this object.
|