The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened up a new window to study highly reddened explosive transients. We present results from late-time JWST follow-up spectroscopic observations with NIRSpec and MIRI-LRS of the intermediate-luminosity red transient (ILRT) AT 2019abn. ILRTs represent a mysterious class of transients that exhibit peak luminosities between those of classical novae and supernovae and that are known to be highly dust obscured. Similar to the prototypical examples of this class of objects, NGC 300 2008-OT and SN 2008S, AT 2019abn has an extremely red and dusty progenitor detected only in pre-explosion Spitzer/IRAC imaging at 3.6 and 4.5 μm and not in deep optical or near-infrared Hubble Space Telescope images. We find that late-time observations of AT 2019abn from NEOWISE and JWST are consistent with the late-time evolution of SN 2008S. In part because they are so obscured by dust, it is unknown what produces an ILRT, with hypotheses including high-mass stellar merger events, nonterminal stellar outbursts, and terminal supernova explosions through electron capture in super-AGB (SAGB) stars. Our JWST observations show strong mid-IR class C polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon features at 6.3 and 8.25 μm typical of carbon-rich post-AGB sources. These features suggest that the dust around AT 2019abn is composed of carbonaceous grains, which are not typically observed around red supergiants. However, depending on the strength and temperature of hot bottom burning, SAGB stars may be expected to exhibit a carbon-rich chemistry. Thus, our JWST observations are consistent with AT 2019abn having an SAGB progenitor and exploding as an electron-capture supernova.
Investigating the Electron-capture Supernova Candidate AT 2019abn with JWST Spectroscopy
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
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Acknowledgement
This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program No. 1240. We thank our JWST program coordinator Shelly Meyett for facilitating our Target of Opportunity (ToO) Activation Request. We are grateful to NIRSpec Instrument Scientist Tony Keyes for his critical input on target acquisition for our NIRSpec observations. This publication makes use of data products from the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which is a joint project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles. NEOWISE is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The authors thank Carolyn Doherty for very helpful discussions regarding the chemical composition of SAGB stars. We also thank Arkaprabha Sarangi and Tea Temim for discussions on dust formation in SNe. We are also grateful to Viraj Karambelkar and Emma Beasor for discussions related to red transients and JWST. We also thank the anonymous referee, whose comments improved the content of this Letter. We acknowledge support from grants JWST-ERS-01349.002-A and JWST-GO-01863.002-A. M.M.K. and J.J. acknowledge NASA support for the RAPID project infrastructure team under award 80NSSC24M0020 (program NNH22ZDA001N-ROMAN).
Facilities
JWST - James Webb Space Telescope (MIRI LRS, NIRSpec), NEOWISE - .
Software References
JWST Science Calibration Pipeline (H. Bushouse et al. 2022), Jdaviz (JDADF-Developers et al. 2023), Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018), Matplotlib (J. D. Hunter 2007), NumPy (S. van der Walt et al. 2011), SciPy (P. Virtanen et al. 2019), pyPAHdb (C. Boersma et al. 2014; C. W. Bauschlicher et al. 2018; A. L. Mattioda et al. 2020).
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Additional details
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NAS 5-03127
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- JWST-ERS-01349.002-A
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- JWST-GO-01863.002-A
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NSSC24M0020
- Accepted
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2025-01-23Accepted
- Available
-
2025-02-07Published
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)
- Publication Status
- Published