Detection of a Red Supergiant Progenitor Star of a Type II-Plateau Supernova
Abstract
We present the discovery of a red supergiant star that exploded as supernova 2003gd in the nearby spiral galaxy M74. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the Gemini Telescope imaged this galaxy 6 to 9 months before the supernova explosion, and subsequent HST images confirm the positional coincidence of the supernova with a single resolved star that is a red supergiant of 8+4<INF ARRANGE="STAGGER">-2 solar masses. This confirms both stellar evolution models and supernova theories predicting that cool red supergiants are the immediate progenitor stars of type II-plateau supernovae.
- Publication:
-
Science
- Pub Date:
- January 2004
- DOI:
- 10.1126/science.1092967
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0401235
- Bibcode:
- 2004Sci...303..499S
- Keywords:
-
- ASTRONOMY;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Accepted for publication in Science, supporting online material available at http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~sjs/sn2003gd/