Abstract
The mass of the residual hydrogen envelope at the time of the explosion of SN1987A is an important parameter which is currently only weakly constrained by evolutionary models. The evolution of the photospheric radius in the first month is shown to be largely determined by the propagation of a hydrogen recombination wave into the ejecta. Provided that the fireball is expanding homologously and that the outer parts have a power-law density distribution, both the scale density and the power-law index can be determined from the observations. Here we show that the residual hydrogen mass was certainly larger than 2M⨀, and possibly as high as 12M⨀.
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Dopita, M. The recombination wave and the hydrogen envelope mass of supernova 1987A. Nature 331, 506–507 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1038/331506a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/331506a0
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