Are Supernovae Dust Factories?

Core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) have long been considered as possible sources of dust in the Universe. Searches with Spitzer and other telescopes have historically come up with dust masses 2-3 orders of magnitude too small compared to theoretical predictions. These observations, however, have generally been limited to early epochs, and in many cases, just the warmer dust. Over the past decade, however, new observations suggest that continuous dust formation builds over decades. As new dust forms, the old dust cools so that massive reservoirs of colder dust are hidden, except at longer wavelengths. Although SN 1987A showed a clear trend in dust growth from 10^-3 to 1.0 solar masses over a 30 year period, no other SNe have measured dust masses later than 5 years post-explosion. The limited data is mostly due to the fact that no instrument has been sensitive to colder (~100-200 K) dust in extragalactic SNe (beyond SN 1987A). Here we propose JWST MIRI Imaging of five of the most dusty, nearby, extragalactic SNe Type IIP that will be more than 5 years old by the time JWST observations begin. Our proposed data will result in a spectral energy distribution of the dust in each SN, which we will us to quantify the mass of cooler dust hidden at longer wavelengths and measure its characteristics. Taken all together, the data points will correspond to a variety of ages that will fill in the missing data of dust growth in SNe.