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The lowest-metallicity type II supernova from the highest-mass red supergiant progenitor

Nature Astronomy volume 2, pages 574–579 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Red supergiants have been confirmed as the progenitor stars of the majority of hydrogen-rich type II supernovae1. However, while such stars are observed with masses >25 M⊙ (ref. 2), detections of >18 M⊙ progenitors remain elusive1. Red supergiants are also expected to form at all metallicities, but discoveries of explosions from low-metallicity progenitors are scarce. Here, we report observations of the type II supernova, SN 2015bs, for which we infer a progenitor metallicity of ≤0.1 Z⊙ from comparison to photospheric-phase spectral models3, and a zero-age main-sequence mass of 17–25 M⊙ through comparison to nebular-phase spectral models4,5. SN 2015bs displays a normal ‘plateau’ light-curve morphology, and typical spectral properties, implying a red supergiant progenitor. This is the first example of such a high-mass progenitor for a ‘normal’ type II supernova, suggesting a link between high-mass red supergiant explosions and low-metallicity progenitors.

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Fig. 1: Absolute V-band light-curves of SN 2015bs together with a comparison sample from the literature.
Fig. 2: Comparison of optical-wavelength spectra of SN 2015bs with literature SNe II.
Fig. 3: Comparison of the 57 day spectrum of SN 2015bs with 0.1 Z⊙ and 0.4 Z⊙ models at +50 days3.

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Acknowledgements

T.K. and T.-W.C. acknowledge support through the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award provided to P. Schady from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany. A.J. acknowledges funding by the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 702538. S.J.S. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant agreement no. [291222] and Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grants ST/I001123/1 and ST/L000709/1. M.D.S., C.C. and E.Y.H. gratefully acknowledge the generous support provided by the Danish Agency for Science and Technology and Innovation realized through a Sapere Aude Level 2 grant. M.D.S. acknowledges funding by a research grant (13261) from the VILLUM FONDEN. Support for S.G.-G. is provided by the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism’s Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009 awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), and CONICYT through FONDECYT grant 3140566. Support for C.A. is provided by the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism’s Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009 awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS), and CONICYT through FONDECYT grant 3150463. M.F. acknowledges the support of a Royal Society–Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellowship. K.M. acknowledges support from the STFC through an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship. M.S. acknowledges support from EU/FP7-ERC grant 615929. The work of the CSP-II has been supported by the National Science Foundation under grants AST0306969, AST0607438, AST1008343 and AST1613426. This work is based (in part) on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, Chile as part of PESSTO (the Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey for Transient Objects) ESO program 188.D-3003, 191.D-0935. This work is based (in part) on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme 296.D-5003(A). This work was partly supported by the European Union FP7 programme through ERC grant number 320360. Pan-STARRS is supported by NASA grants NNX08AR22G, NNX14AM74G. PS1 surveys acknowledge the PS1SC: University of Hawaii, MPIA Heidelberg, MPE Garching, Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, Queens University Belfast, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, LCOGT, NCU Taiwan, STScI, University of Maryland, Eotvos Lorand University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and NSF grant no. AST-1238877. A. Gal-Yam, M. Bersten, F. Förster, J. Hillier, F. Taddia and C. Fransson are thanked for useful discussions. This research has made use of: the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics; iraf, which is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation; QfitsView; and the SDSS, funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web Site is http://www.sdss.org/.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile

    J. P. Anderson

  2. Unidad Mixta Internacional Franco-Chilena de Astronomía (CNRS UMI 3386), Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    L. Dessart

  3. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    C. P. Gutiérrez, C. Inserra & M. Sullivan

  4. Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany

    T. Krühler & T. -W. Chen

  5. PITT PACC, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    L. Galbany

  6. Astrophysics Research Centre, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queens University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    A. Jerkstrand, S. J. Smartt, E. Kankare, K. Maguire & D. R. Young

  7. Carnegie Observatories, Las Campanas Observatory, La Serena, Chile

    C. Contreras, N. Morrell, M. M. Phillips & C. Gonzalez

  8. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    M. D. Stritzinger

  9. Department of Physics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    E. Y. Hsiao & S. Castellón

  10. Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    S. González-Gaitán & C. Agliozzo

  11. Center for Mathematical Modelling, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    S. González-Gaitán

  12. Departamento de Ciencias Fisicas, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile

    C. Agliozzo

  13. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA

    K. C. Chambers, H. Flewelling, M. Huber, E. Magnier & T. B. Lowe

  14. Las Cumbres Observatory, Goleta, CA, USA

    G. Hosseinzadeh

  15. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    G. Hosseinzadeh

  16. O’Brien Centre for Science, North University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, Ireland

    M. Fraser

  17. Tuorla Observatory, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, Piikkiö, Finland

    S. Mattila

  18. Department of Astronomy and the Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University, AlbaNova, Stockholm, Sweden

    J. Sollerman

  19. Department of Physics, University of California, Davis , Davis, CA, USA

    S. Valenti

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  1. J. P. Anderson
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  2. L. Dessart
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  30. M. Sullivan
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  31. D. R. Young
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  32. S. Valenti
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Contributions

J.P.A. performed the analysis and wrote the manuscript. L.D. helped write the manuscript and provided comments on the physical interpretation. C.P.G. provided specific measurements of pEWs of spectral lines and was part of the overall project to obtain these data. T.K. reduced the MUSE dataset. L.G. helped obtain the MUSE dataset. A.J. provided comments on the physical interpretation of the nebular spectral comparisons. S.J.S. is principal investigator of the PESSTO project, through which spectra were obtained. C.C. provided calibrated photometry from the CSP-II. M.P.P. is principal investigator of the CSP that provided photometry. N.M., M.S., E.Y.H, S.C. and C.G. are co-investigators on the CSP, which provided photometric data. S.G.-G. analysed the light-curve data of SN 2015bs. C.A., T.W.-C., M.F., C.I., E.K., S.M., K.M., J.S., M.S., D.R.Y. and S.V. were part of the PESSTO project, through which spectra were obtained. K.C.C., H.F., M.H., E.M. and T.B.L. provided photometry through the Pan-STARRS project. G.H. provided a spectrum from LCO.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. P. Anderson.

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Anderson, J.P., Dessart, L., Gutiérrez, C.P. et al. The lowest-metallicity type II supernova from the highest-mass red supergiant progenitor. Nat Astron 2, 574–579 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0458-4

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