SN 2006gy: An Extremely Luminous Supernova in the Galaxy NGC 1260

By Eran Ofek, P. B. Cameron, M. Kasliwal, A. Gal-yam, A. Rau, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, D. Frail, P. Chandra, S. Cenko, A. Soderberg and 1 more. 2006

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With an extinction-corrected V-band peak absolute magnitude of about -22, supernova SN 2006gy is probably the brightest SN ever observed. We report on multiwavelength observations of this SN and its environment. Our spectroscopy shows an Hα emission line as well as absorption features that may be identified as Si II lines at low expansion velocity. The slow brightening, the peak luminosity, and the Hα emission line resemble those observed in hybrid Type IIn/Ia SNe (also known as Type IIa) and may suggest that SN 2006gy is related to the Type IIa SNe class. The host galaxy, NGC 1260, is dominated by an old stellar population with solar metallicity. However, our high-resolution adaptive optics images reveal a dust lane in this galaxy, and there appears to be an H II region in the vicinity of the SN. The extraordinarily large peak luminosity, ~3 × 1044 ergs s-1, demands a dense circumstellar medium, regardless of the mass of the progenitor star. The inferred mass-loss rate of the progenitor is ~0.1 M☉ yr-1 over a period of ~10 yr prior to explosion. Such an high mass-loss rate may be the result of a binary star common envelope ejection. The total radiated energy in the first 2 months is about 1.1 × 1051 ergs, which is only a factor of 2 less than that available from a super-Chandrasekhar Type Ia explosion. Therefore, given the presence of a star-forming region in the vicinity of the SN and the high-energy requirements, a plausible scenario is that SN 2006gy is related to the death of a massive star.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ce09019001e4e7910623e65db386705b10342a1c

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Citations in the corpus

• The R136 star cluster hosts several stars whose individual masses greatly exceed the accepted 150 M⊙ stellar mass limit (2010, background): “…demonstrated that local pair-instability SNe could be produced either by slow rotating moderately metalpoor (≤1/3 Z ) yellow hypergiants with thick hydrogen-rich envelopes – resembling SN 2006gy (Ofek et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2007) – or rapidly rotating very metal-deficient (≤10−3 Z ) WR stars.”
• Unifying Type II Supernova Light Curves with Dense Circumstellar Material (2016, background): “…Foley et al. 2007; Pastorello et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2010; Foley et al. 2011; Mauerhan et al. 2013; Pastorello et al. 2013) or inferred from the dense CSM needed to explain SN light curves (e.g., Smith & McCray 2007; Smith et al. 2007; Ofek et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2008; Fransson et al. 2014).”
• Spectroscopy of superluminous supernova host galaxies. A preference of hydrogen-poor events for extreme emission line galaxies (2014, background): “Two more SLSNe-II (IIn) not covered in this study support the idea that H-rich SLSNe explode in different environments than Hpoor SLSNe: SN 2006gy (Ofek et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2007) and CSS100217 (Drake et al. 2011).”
• The Proto-Magnetar Model for Gamma-Ray Bursts (2010, background): “A number of core-collapse SNe have been recently discovered that are unusually bright and/or optically-energetic (e.g. Ofek et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2008; Quimby et al. 2007; Rest et al. 2009; Gal-Yam et al. 2007; Quimby et al. 2009).”
• On the diversity of superluminous supernovae: ejected mass as the dominant factor (2015, background): “The prototypical example here is SN 2006gy (Ofek et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2007), and the physical mechanism (the conversion of kinetic energy to radiative energy by shocks at the ejecta–CSM collision) is well established.”
• HYDROGEN-POOR SUPERLUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AND LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS HAVE SIMILAR HOST GALAXIES (2013, background): “…example, members of the subclass of the SLSNe that show hydrogen in their spectra can be classified as Type IIn SNe, with the origin of the extreme luminosity being interaction with a dense circumstellar medium (e.g., Ofek et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2007, 2010; Rest et al. 2011; Moriya et al. 2013).”
• Nearby Supernova Rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. II. The Observed Luminosity Functions and Fractions of Supernovae in a Complete Sample (2010, background): “…several extremely luminous CC SNe have been reported, including SN 2003ma (Rest et al. 2009), SN 2005ap (Quimby et al. 2007), SN 2006gy (Smith et al. 2007; Ofek et al. 2007), SN 2006tf (Smith et al. 2008), SN 2008es (Miller et al. 2009; Gezari et al. 2009), and SN 2008fz (Drake et al. 2010).”
• SN 2005cs in M51 – II. Complete evolution in the optical and the near-infrared (2009, background): “Although Ofek et al. (2007), Kulkarni et al. (2007) and Rau et al. (2007) classified it as an anomalous, luminous red nova possibly resulting from a rather exotic stellar merger, it shares some similarities with the SN 1997D-like events (resembling also a faint type IIn SN).”