Research Division Seminar
Progenitors of recent core-collapse supernovae

Abstract

Supernovae are at the heart of some of the most important problems of modern astronomy. To fully understand their importance and to enable their use as probes of stellar evolution throughout cosmic time, it is
absolutely essential to determine their stellar origins, i.e., their progenitors or progenitor systems. Even with over 5600 known SNe, we have only direct information about the progenitor star for a handful of explosions. Based on the statistics of 20 SNe II-P for which progenitors have been isolated or upper mass limits established, it has been derived a
more limited range of 8-17 solar masses for these stars, and it appears that all of these progenitors exploded in the RSG phase, as we would theoretically expect. However there has been no detection of a higher mass stars in the range 20-40 solar masses, which should be the most luminous and brightest stars in these galaxies. Therefore, I will present here the
results of our group in the analysis of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and deep ground-based images, isolating the massive progenitor stars of several recent core-collapse supernovae.