English

The Crab Nebula's Composition and Precursor Star Mass

Astrophysics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

We present results of new photoionization calculations for investigating gaseous regions that represent potentially expected stages of nuclear processing in the Crab Nebula supernova remnant. In addition to gas resulting from CNO-processing and oxygen-burning, as previously reported, a large component of the nebula appears to be carbon-rich. These results suggest that the precursor star had an initial mass of 9.5 solar masses or more.

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.1342,
  title  = {The Crab Nebula's Composition and Precursor Star Mass},
  author = {Gordon M. MacAlpine and Timothy J. Satterfield},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.1342},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

manuscript in AASTeX, 6 figures in .eps, submitted to Astronomical Journal

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:48:33.128Z