A massive hypergiant star as the progenitor of the supernova SN 2005gl

A. Gal-Yam () and D. C. Leonard
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A. Gal-Yam: Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics , Faculty of Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science
D. C. Leonard: San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182, USA

Nature, 2009, vol. 458, issue 7240, 865-867

Abstract: Supernovae out of the blue The supernova SN 1987A looms large when it comes to testing models of the late stages of the evolution of massive stars: it is the only supernova for which a progenitor star was known at the precise supernova location before the explosion. The progenitor was a blue supergiant, which is not what the then-current models of stellar evolution had predicted. Now a progenitor has been conclusively identified for a second supernova, SN 2005gl. Images from the Hubble archive, taken in 1997, confirm that the very luminous point source NGC266_LBV 1 was present at the exact location of SN 2005gl. In Hubble observations from 2007, this object has completely vanished. So the SN 2005gl progenitor was a luminous blue variable that, according to standard stellar evolution, should not have exploded in that state. Further revisions of stellar evolution models are therefore in order.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07934

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