1. On the progenitor of the Type IIb supernova 2016gkg
- Author
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Kilpatrick, Charles D, Foley, Ryan J, Abramson, Louis E, Pan, Yen-Chen, Lu, Cicero-Xinyu, Williams, Peter, Treu, Tommaso, Siebert, Matthew R, Fassnacht, Christopher D, and Max, Claire E
- Subjects
stars: evolution ,supernovae: general ,supernovae: individual: SN 2016gkg ,astro-ph.SR ,astro-ph.HE ,Astronomical and Space Sciences ,Astronomy & Astrophysics - Abstract
We present a detection in pre-explosion Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging of a point source consistent with being the progenitor star of the Type IIb supernova (SN IIb) 2016gkg. Post-explosion imaging from the Keck adaptive optics system was used to perform relative astrometry between the Keck and HST imaging. We identify a single point source in the HST images coincident with the SN position to 0.89σ. The HST photometry is consistent with the progenitor star being an A0 Ia star with T = 9500 K and log (L/L⊙) = 5.15. We find that the SN 2016gkg progenitor star appears more consistent with binary than single-star evolutionary models. In addition, early-time light-curve data from SN 2016gkg revealed a rapid rise in luminosity within ~0.4 d of non-detection limits, consistent with models of the cooling phase after shock break-out. We use these data to determine an explosion date of 2016 September 20.15 and progenitor-star radius of log (R/R⊙) = 2.41, which agrees with photometry from the progenitor star. Our findings are also consistent with detections of other SNe IIb progenitor stars, although more luminous and bluer than most other examples.
- Published
- 2017