The SN 2023ixf Progenitor in M101. II. Properties

Creators: Van Dyk, Schuyler D.; Srinivasan, Sundar; Andrews, Jennifer E.; Soraisam, Monika; Szalai, Tamás; Howell, Steve B.; Isaacson, Howard; Matheson, Thomas; Petigura, Erik; Scicluna, Peter; Stephens, Andrew W.; Van Zandt, Judah; Zheng, WeiKang; Chun, Sang-Hyun; Fillippenko, Alexei V.

Abstract

We follow our first paper with an analysis of the ensemble of the extensive preexplosion ground- and space-based infrared observations of the red supergiant (RSG) progenitor candidate for the nearby core-collapse supernova SN 2023ixf in Messier 101, together with optical data prior to the explosion obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We have confirmed the association of the progenitor candidate with the supernova (SN), as well as constrained the metallicity at the SN site, based on SN observations with instruments at Gemini-North. The internal host extinction to the SN has also been confirmed from a high-resolution Keck spectrum. We fit the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) for the star, accounting for its intrinsic variability, with dust radiative-transfer modeling, which assumes a silicate-rich dust shell ahead of the underlying stellar photosphere. The star is heavily dust obscured, likely the dustiest progenitor candidate yet encountered. We found median estimates of the star's effective temperature and luminosity of 2770 K and 9.0 × 10⁴L_⊙, with 68% credible intervals of 2340–3150 K and (7.5–10.9) × 10⁴L_⊙, respectively. The candidate may have a Galactic RSG analog, IRC −10414, with a strikingly similar SED and luminosity. Via comparison with single-star evolutionary models we have constrained the initial mass of the progenitor candidate from 12 M_⊙ to as high as 14 M_⊙. We have had available to us an extraordinary view of the SN 2023ixf progenitor candidate, which should be further followed up in future years with HST and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Copyright and License

© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the reviewer for the several comments that helped improve the manuscript. We thank Daichi Hiramatsu for providing the photometry for SN 2006Y and SN 2006ai. This work was authored by employees of Caltech/IPAC under Contract No. 80GSFC21R0032 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. This work is based in part on archival data obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by an award issued by JPL/Caltech. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and JPL/Caltech, funded by NASA. We also made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is funded by NASA and operated by Caltech. Based in part on observations obtained at the international Gemini Observatory, acquired through the Gemini Observatory Archive at the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) NOIRLab and processed using Data Reduction for Astronomy from Gemini Observatory North and South (DRAGONS). Some of the observations in the paper made use of the High-Resolution Imaging instrument 'Alopeke, which was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and built at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley. 'Alopeke was mounted on the Gemini-North telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, which is managed by AURA under a cooperative agreement with the NSF, on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the NSF (United States), National Research Council (Canada), Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Argentina), Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among Caltech, the University of California, and NASA. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. Both Keck and Gemini-North are located within the Maunakea Science Reserve and adjacent to the summit of Maunakea. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this unique mountain. KAIT and its ongoing operation were made possible by donations from Sun Microsystems, Inc., the Hewlett-Packard Company, AutoScope Corporation, the Lick Observatory, the NSF, the University of California, the Sylvia & Jim Katzman Foundation, and the TABASGO Foundation. Research at Lick Observatory is partially supported by a generous gift from Google. This research has made use of the Spanish Virtual Observatory (https://svo.cab.inta-csic.es; Rodrigo et al. 2012; Rodrigo & Solano 2020) project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ through grant PID2020-112949GB-I00. S.S. acknowledges support from UNAM-PAPIIT Program IA104822. T.S. is supported by the NKFIH/OTKA grant FK-134432 of the National Research, Development and Innovation (NRDI) Office of Hungary, by the Jnos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and by the New National Excellence Program (UNKP-22-5) of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation from the source of the NRDI Fund, Hungary. A.V.F.'s group at U.C. Berkeley is grateful for financial assistance from NASA/HST grant AR-14295, the Christopher R. Redlich Fund, Gary and Cynthia Bengier, Clark and Sharon Winslow, Alan Eustace (W.Z. is a Bengier–Winslow–Eustace Specialist in Astronomy), and many other donors. S.H.C. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT; NRF-2021R1C1C2003511) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute under R&D program (Project No. 2023-1-860-02) supervised by the Ministry of Science and ICT.

Facilities

HST (WFPC2, ACS, WFC3) - Hubble Space Telescope satellite, Spitzer - Spitzer Space Telescope satellite, WISE - Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Gemini - , Keck:I (HIRES) - , Lick - , Herschel - European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory, and Akari -

Software References

APEX (Makovoz & Marleau 2005), AstroDrizzle (STScI Development Team 2012), astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), DAOPHOT (Stetson 1987), Dolphot (Dolphin 2016), DUSTY (Ivezic et al. 1999), DRAGONS (Labrie et al. 2019), emcee (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013), MOPEX (Makovoz & Khan 2005), photutils (Bradley et al. 2022), and PyRAF (Science Software Branch at STScI 2012)

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