We present optical photometry and spectroscopy of the type IIP supernova SN 2004et that occurred in the nearby galaxy NGC 6946. The observations span a time range of 8 days to 541 days after explosion. The late time bolometric luminosity and the Hα luminosity in the nebular phase indicate that 0.06±0.02M⊙ of 56Ni was synthesised during the explosion. The plateau luminosity, its duration and the expansion velocity of the supernova at the middle of the plateau indicate an explosion energy of Eexp=1.20−0.30+0.38×1051 ergs. The late time light curve and the evolution of the [OI] and Hα emission line profiles indicate the possibility of an early dust formation in the supernova ejecta. The luminosity of [OI] 6300, 6364 \AA doublet, before the dust formation phase, is found to be comparable to that of SN 1987A at similar epochs, impling an oxygen mass in the range 1.5−2M⊙, and a main sequence mass of 20M⊙ for the progenitor.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0608432,
title = {Photometric and spectroscopic evolution of the type IIP supernova SN 2004et},
author = {D. K. Sahu and G. C. Anupama and S. Srividya and S. Muneer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0608432},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
26 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS