The search for failed supernovae with the Large Binocular Telescope: confirmation of a disappearing star
By S. Adams, C. Kochanek, J. Gerke, Krzysztof Zbigniew Stanek, Xinyu Dai. 2016
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We present Hubble Space Telescope imaging confirming the optical disappearance of the failed supernova (SN) candidate identified by Gerke, Kochanek & Stanek. This ∼25 M⊙ red supergiant experienced a weak ∼10^6 L⊙ optical outburst in 2009 and is now at least 5 mag fainter than the progenitor in the optical. The mid-IR flux has slowly decreased to the lowest levels since the first measurements in 2004. There is faint (2000–3000 L⊙) near-IR emission likely associated with the source. We find the late-time evolution of the source to be inconsistent with obscuration from an ejected, dusty shell. Models of the spectral energy distribution indicate that the remaining bolometric luminosity is >6 times fainter than that of the progenitor and is decreasing as ∼t^(−4/3). We conclude that the transient is unlikely to be an SN impostor or stellar merger. The event is consistent with the ejection of the envelope of a red supergiant in a failed SN and the late-time emission could be powered by fallback accretion on to a newly formed black hole. Future IR and X-ray observations are needed to confirm this interpretation of the fate for the star.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20b8d7aaf97dd241010c2f1435ec04f27e78d800
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Measuring the Progenitor Masses and Dense Circumstellar Material of Type II Supernovae (2017, background): “They might eject their hydrogen envelope in a low-energy explosion (as described by Nadezhin 1980, Lovegrove & Woosley 2013, Piro 2013, and Lovegrove et al. 2017, and as potentially observed by Adams et al. 2017) rather than a typical SN.”
- The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives (2019, background): “Though the temporal sampling is coarse, the observations of the failed SN candidate reveal a several month long transient consistent with this prediction (Adams et al. 2017).”
- What can be learned from a future supernova neutrino detection (2017, background): “Two candidates for failed supernova have been reported [72, 75, 76].”