The Yellow Supergiant Progenitor of the Type II Supernova 2011dh in M51

Details The Yellow Supergiant Progenitor of the Type II Supernova 2011dh in M51 The Yellow Supergiant Progenitor of the Type II Supernova 2011dh in M51

2011-06-13

arxiv.org/abs/1106.2565v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Submitted to ApJ Letters - 6 pages, 5 figures

Scientific paper

We present the detection of the progenitor of the Type II SN 2011dh in archival pre-explosion Hubble Space Telescope images. Using post-explosion Adaptive Optics imaging with Gemini NIRI+ALTAIR, the position of the SN in the pre-explosion images was determined to within 23mas. The progenitor object was found to be consistent with a F8 supergiant star (log L/L_{\odot}=4.92+/-0.20 and T_{eff}=6000+/-280K). Through comparison with stellar evolution tracks, this corresponds to a single star at the end of core C-burning with an initial mass of M_{ZAMS}=13+/-3M_{\odot}. The possibility of the progenitor source being a cluster is rejected, on the basis of: 1) the source is not spatially extended; 2) the absence of excess H\alpha\, emission; and 3) the poor fit to synthetic cluster SEDs. It is unclear if a binary companion is contributing to the observed SED, although given the excellent correspondence of the observed photometry to a single star SED we suggest the companion does not contribute significantly. Early photometric and spectroscopic observations show fast evolution similar to the transitional Type IIb SN 2008ax, and suggest that a large amount of the progenitor's hydrogen envelope was removed before explosion.

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