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Detection of a Red Supergiant Progenitor Star of a Type II-Plateau Supernova

Smartt, Stephen J.; Mattila, Seppo; Gilmore, Gerard F. +4 more

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 tha…