Related papers: Massive stars in their death-throes
Identifying the massive progenitor stars that give rise to core-collapse supernovae is one of the main pursuits of supernova and stellar evolution studies. In this talk I discuss some aspects of the pursuit of these progenitor stars in…
The progenitors of Type IIP supernovae have an apparent upper limit to their initial masses of about 20 solar masses, suggesting that the most massive red supergiants evolve to warmer temperatures before their terminal explosion. But very…
The direct detection of core-collapse supernova (SN) progenitor stars is a powerful way of probing the last stages of stellar evolution. However, detections in archival Hubble Space Telescope images are limited to about one per year. Here,…
Type Ia supernovae are exploding stars that are used to measure the accelerated expansion of the Universe and are responsible for most of the iron ever produced. Although there is general agreement that the exploding star is a white dwarf…
Stellar evolution theory predicts multiple pathways to the explosive deaths of stars as supernovae. Locating and characterizing the progenitors of well-studied supernovae is important to constrain the theory, and to justify and design…
The progenitors of Type II-P supernovae (SNe) are generally considered to be red supergiants; however, the so-called "red supergiant problem" indicates that a deeper investigation into the progenitors of this class of SNe is necessary. SN…
There are a growing number of nearby SNe for which the progenitor star is detected in archival pre-explosion imaging. From these images it is possible to measure the progenitor's brightness a few years before explosion, and ultimately…
All types of supernovae (SNe), except Type Ia, have been observed to interact with their immediate circumstellar medium (CSM). This interaction can reveal their progenitor's histories, and constrain our ideas about the evolution of massive…
The progenitors of Type IIP supernovae (SNe) are known to be red supergiants, but their properties are not well determined. We employ hydrodynamical modelling to investigate the explosion characteristics of eight Type IIP supernovae, and…
It has been well established from a variety of observations that red supergiants (RSGs) loose a lot of mass in stellar wind. Dust formed in this emitted gas over a few decades before core-collapse can lead to substantial extinction and…
The sequence of massive star supernova types IIP (plateau light curve), IIL (linear light curve), IIb, IIn (narrow line), Ib, and Ic roughly represents a sequence of increasing mass loss during the stellar evolution. The mass loss affects…
The progenitors of hydrogen-poor core-collapse supernovae (SNe) of types Ib, Ic and IIb are believed to have shed their outer hydrogen envelopes either by extremely strong stellar winds, characteristic of classical Wolf-Rayet stars, or by…
Stars more massive than about 8 Msun end their lives as a Supernova (SN), an event of fundamental importance Universe-wide. Theoretically, these stars have been expected to be either at the red supergiant, blue supergiant, or Wolf-Rayet…
For typical models of binary statistics, 50-70% of core-collapse supernova (ccSN) progenitors are members of a stellar binary at the time of the explosion. Independent of any consequences of mass transfer, this has observational…
Type Ib/c supernovae (SNe Ib/c) mark the deaths of hydrogen-deficient massive stars. The evolutionary scenarios for SNe Ib/c progenitors involve many important physical processes including mass loss by winds and its metallicity dependence,…
The progenitors of many Type II supernovae have been observationally identified but the search for Type Ibc supernova (SN Ibc) progenitors has thus far been unsuccessful, despite the expectation that they are luminous Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars.…
Massive stars less massive than ~30 Msol evolve into a red supergiant after the main sequence. Given a standard IMF, this means about 80% of all single massive stars will experience this phase. RSGs are dominated by convection, with a…
Massive stars are essential to understand a variety of branches of astronomy including galaxy and star cluster evolution, nucleosynthesis and supernovae, pulsars and black holes. It has become evident that massive star evolution is very…
Massive stars undergo a violent death when the supply of nuclear fuel in their cores is exhausted, resulting in a catastrophic "core-collapse" supernova. Such events are usually only detected at least a few days after the star has exploded.…
Core-collapse supernovae showing little or no hydrogen (denoted by Type IIb and Ib, respectively) are the explosions of massive stars that have lost some or most of their outer envelopes. How they lose their mass is unclear, but it likely…