THE YELLOW SUPERGIANT PROGENITOR OF THE TYPE II SUPERNOVA 2011dh IN M51

By J. Maund, Morgan Fraser, M. Ergon, A. Pastorello, S. Smartt, J. Sollerman, S. Benetti, M. Botticella, Filomena Bufano, I. J. Danziger and 4 more. 2011

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the detection of the putative progenitor of the Type IIb SN 2011dh in archival pre-explosion Hubble Space Telescope images. Using post-explosion Adaptive Optics imaging with Gemini NIRI+ALTAIR, the position of the supernova (SN) in the pre-explosion images was determined to within 23 mas. The progenitor candidate is consistent with an F8 supergiant star (logL/L☉ = 4.92 ± 0.20 and Teff = 6000 ± 280 K). Through comparison with stellar evolution tracks, this corresponds to a single star at the end of core C-burning with an initial mass of MZAMS = 13 ± 3 M☉. The possibility of the progenitor source being a cluster is rejected, on the basis of: (1) the source not being spatially extended, (2) the absence of excess Hα emission, and (3) the poor fit to synthetic cluster spectral energy distributions (SEDs). It is unclear if a binary companion is contributing to the observed SED, although given the excellent correspondence of the observed photometry to a single star SED we suggest that the companion does not contribute significantly. Early photometric and spectroscopic observations show fast evolution similar to the transitional Type IIb SN 2008ax and suggest that a large amount of the progenitor's hydrogen envelope was removed before explosion. Late-time observations will reveal if the yellow supergiant or the putative companion star were responsible for this SN explosion.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a1c76f08d38d5e05cf94eca5b97c73722f0cadf

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Smartt
2. G. Meynet
3. R. Hirschi
4. S. Ekström
5. Andre Maeder
6. Stan Woosley
7. C. Georgy
8. S. Valenti

In Instrumentation

1. S. Smartt
2. G. Meynet
3. R. Hirschi
4. Andre Maeder
5. S. Ekström
6. S. Valenti
7. C. Georgy
8. J. Eldridge

Citations in the corpus

• Fundamental properties of core-collapse Supernova and GRB progenitors: predicting the look of massive stars before death (2013, background): “Stars finishing their lives as yellow luminous stars have been customarily classified as yellow supergiants (YSG); see e.g. Elias-Rosa et al. (2009, 2010); Fraser et al. (2010); Maund et al. (2011); Georgy (2012).”
• Early-time light curves of Type Ib/c supernovae from the SDSS-II Supernova Survey (2014, background): “(∼ 200 R ) yellow supergiant progenitors (Maund et al. 2011; Bersten et al. 2012; Ergon et al. 2014a,b).”
• Grids of stellar models with rotation - II. WR populations and supernovae/GRB progenitors at Z = 0.014 (2012, background): “2) Observations of yellow supergiant progenitors for IIb SNe have been made recently (Crockett et al. 2008, see Maund et al. 2011 and references therein).”
• THE TYPE IIb SUPERNOVA 2011dh FROM A SUPERGIANT PROGENITOR (2012, methodology): “Because color uncertainties are expected to arise from unknown mass-loss history of the progenitor, Maund et al. (2011) assumed only the luminosity was reliable, and derived MZAMS = 13±3 M⊙ from the end point of the evolutionary track that matched the luminosity.”
• SN 2011dh: DISCOVERY OF A TYPE IIb SUPERNOVA FROM A COMPACT PROGENITOR IN THE NEARBY GALAXY M51 (2011, methodology): “Therefore, the object identified on pre-explosion HST images (Maund et al. 2011, Van Dyk et al. 2011) is probably not the solo progenitor of PTF11eon.”
• Production of dust by massive stars at high redshift (2011, background): “However, the alignment of the SN subtypes might correspond to increasing mass-loss of the hydrogen envelope (for Type II SNe) and subsequent stripping of the helium envelope (Type I SNe) of the progenitors (e.g., Nomoto et al, 1995; Maund et al, 2011).”
• Progenitor mass constraints for core-collapse supernovae from correlations with host galaxy star formation⋆ (2012, background): “In both cases, whether one assumes a single or binary scenario, the progenitors appear to be in the 15– 20 M range (Aldering, Humphreys & Richmond 1994; Maund et al. 2004; Maund & Smartt 2009; Maund et al. 2011; Van Dyk et al. 2011).”
• Observational Constraints on the Progenitors of Core-Collapse Supernovae: The Case for Missing High-Mass Stars (2015, background): “Maund et al. (2014a, 2014b) discuss this in detail and the case for the disappearance of the progenitor of SN2011dh is presented in Van Dyk et al. (2013).”
• Bolometric light curves and explosion parameters of 38 stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae (2014, background): “…in archival imaging can reveal the properties of the SN progenitor (e.g. Van Dyk, Li & Filippenko 2003; Smartt et al. 2004; Li et al. 2007; Gal-Yam & Leonard 2009; Van Dyk et al. 2012; Fraser et al. 2011, 2012; Maund et al. 2011; Van Dyk et al. 2013), but only for a very limited number of events.”