Detection of a Red Supergiant Progenitor Star of a Type II-Plateau Supernova
Smartt, Stephen J.; Mattila, Seppo; Gilmore, Gerard F.; Maund, Justyn R.; Benn, Chris R.; Tout, Christopher A.; Hendry, Margaret A.
United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain
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.