Probing Circumstellar and Interstellar Dust with Scattered-Light Echoes

Mathematics – Logic

Scientific paper

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Hst Proposal Id #10607 Interstellar And Intergalactic Medium

Scientific paper

Scattered-light echoes are one of the most powerful and efficient probes of the structure and composition of dust in circumstellar and interstellar {ISM} environments. Observations of light echoes provide exact three-dimensional positions of dust while constraining its density, grain-size and chemical make-up. Furthermore, echoes can be used as distance indicators via polarization measurements. We propose to take deep, high-resolution ACS/HRC images of five supernovae {SNe}. Two of these, SNe 1991T and 1998bu, have known circumstellar echoes that have only recently become fully resolvable with HST, and therefore require new observations. Only four echo-producing SNe are currently known, and in an attempt to increase this sample, we will also observe SNe 1999bw, 2002hh, and 2004dj. All three SNe are strong candidates for producing echoes from circumstellar and ISM dust, but only at angular sizes that HST can resolve. With these observations, we will use light echoes to their full advantage, to study {1} the mass-loss histories of Type II and Ia SN progenitors, {2} the contributions of these SNe and their progenitors to the dust content of their galaxies, {3} the structure of gas and stars in the ISM of external galaxies, and {4} we will independently measure the distance to the host galaxies, including a member of the Virgo cluster, and M96, a Type Ia cosmological distance-scale calibrator.

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