Other
Scientific paper
Mar 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008sptz.prop50603v&link_type=abstract
Spitzer Proposal ID #50603
Other
Scientific paper
We know very little about the evolution of supernovae as they age and evolve to supernova remnants. We also cannot yet explain why galaxies at high redshift, early in the history of the Universe, show appreciable dust content so early on. Various models have introduced the possibility that core-collapse supernovae from early stars may be the main contributors of the dust. Recently, particularly with Spitzer, several investigations have attempted to determine whether or not supernovae, based on nearby events, produce enough dust to match the model predictions. So far, the results have not been promising, but the supernovae have been from relatively low-mass progenitors. Analysis of the dust content in the young Galactic supernova remnant Cas A, which may have had a very massive Wolf-Rayet star progenitor, has indicated that possibly enough dust has been freshly formed to be in agreement with the lower limits of these models. This indicates potentially that supernovae from high-mass stars could be adequate dust producers. The unusual supernova 1978K has very recently been imaged in IRAC and MIPS observations of its host galaxy, NGC 1313. From data at other wavelengths it appears that this supernova is now evolving to the remnant phase. Many indicators point to this supernova having had a very massive stellar progenitor---it therefore could have been producing large amounts of dust in the ejecta. The supernova is very luminous in the mid-infrared, as seen by Spitzer, nearly 30 years after explosion, and we are proposing to obtain an IRS spectrum, as well as follow-up IRAC, MIPS, and PUI imaging, to investigate more fully the state of its evolution and the nature of the dust emission from the object.
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