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Letter

Nature 458, 865-867 (16 April 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07934; Received 12 July 2008; Accepted 11 February 2009; Published online 22 March 2009

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

A. Gal-Yam1 & D. C. Leonard2

  1. Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics , Faculty of Physics, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
  2. Department of Astronomy, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182, USA

Correspondence to: A. Gal-Yam1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.G.-Y. (Email: avishay.gal-yam@weizmann.ac.il.).

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Our understanding of the evolution of massive stars before their final explosions as supernovae is incomplete, from both an observational and a theoretical standpoint. A key missing piece in the supernova puzzle is the difficulty of identifying and studying progenitor stars. In only a single case—that of supernova SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud—has a star been detected at the supernova location before the explosion, and been subsequently shown to have vanished after the supernova event1. The progenitor of SN 1987A was a blue supergiant, which required a rethink of stellar evolution models2. The progenitor of supernova SN 2005gl was proposed to be an extremely luminous object3, but the association was not robustly established (it was not even clear that the putative progenitor was a single luminous star). Here we report that the previously proposed3 object was indeed the progenitor star of SN 2005gl. This very massive star was likely a luminous blue variable that standard stellar evolution predicts should not have exploded in that state.

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