CaltechAUTHORS
Published May 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

JWST/MIRI detects the dusty SN1993J about 30 years after explosion

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Szeged
  • 2. MTA-ELTE Lendület "Momentum" Milky Way Research Group, Szent Imre H. st. 112, 9700, Szombathely, Hungary
  • 3. ROR icon Johns Hopkins University
  • 4. ROR icon Space Telescope Science Institute
  • 5. ROR icon University of Copenhagen
  • 6. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 7. ROR icon Ghent University
  • 8. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 9. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 10. ROR icon Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  • 11. ROR icon Gemini North Observatory
  • 12. ROR icon Virginia Tech
  • 13. ROR icon Louisiana State University
  • 14. ROR icon Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
  • 15. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 16. ROR icon Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  • 17. ROR icon Stockholm University
  • 18. ROR icon Purdue University West Lafayette
  • 19. ROR icon University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 20. ROR icon National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand
  • 21. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 22. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 23. ROR icon NOIRLab
  • 24. ROR icon European Space Astronomy Centre
  • 25. ROR icon University of Virginia
  • 26. ROR icon Hebei University

Abstract

Context. Core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) have long been considered to contribute significantly to the cosmic dust budget. Newly-formed dust in the SN ejecta cools quickly and is therefore detectable at mid-infrared (mid-IR) wavelengths. However, before the era of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), direct observational evidence for dust condensation was found in only a handful of nearby CCSNe, and dust masses (∼10−2 − 10−3 M⊙, generally limited to < 5 yr and to > 500 K temperatures) have been two to three orders of magnitude smaller than theoretical predictions and dust amounts found by far-IR/submillimeter observations of Galactic SN remnants and in the very nearby SN 1987A.

Aims. As recently demonstrated, the combined angular resolution and mid-IR sensitivity of JWST finally allow hidden cool (∼100–200 K) dust reservoirs in extragalactic SNe beyond SN 1987A to be revealed. Our team received JWST/MIRI time for studying a larger sample of CCSNe to fill the currently existing gap in their dust formation histories. The first observed target of this program was the well-known Type IIb SN 1993J that appeared in M81.

Methods. We generated its spectral energy distribution (SED) from the current JWST/MIRI F770W, F1000W, F1500W, and F2100W fluxes. We fit single- and two-component silicate and carbonaceous dust models to the SED in order to determine the dust parameters.

Results. We find that SN 1993J still contains a significant amount (∼0.01 M⊙) of dust ∼30 yr after explosion. Comparing our results to those from the analysis of earlier Spitzer Space Telescope data, we observed a similar amount of dust as was detected ∼15–20 yr ago, but at a lower temperature (noting that the modeling results of the earlier Spitzer SEDs have strong limitations). We also found residual background emission near the SN site (after point-spread-function subtraction on the JWST/MIRI images) that may plausibly be attributed to an IR echo from more distant interstellar dust grains heated by the SN shock-breakout luminosity or ongoing star formation in the local environment.

Copyright and License

© The Authors 2025. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

We thank our anonymous referee for valuable comments. 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 SURVEY 3921. This project has been supported by the NKFIH OTKA FK-134432 grant of the National Research, Development and Innovation (NRDI) Office of Hungary. S.Z. is supported by the ÚNKP-23-4-SZTE-574 New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Culture and Innovation from the source of the NRDI Fund, Hungary. I.D.L. has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme DustOrigin (ERC-2019-StG-851622) and the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) through the PRODEX project “JWST/MIRI Science exploitation” (C4000142239). A.V.F. is grateful for financial support from the Christopher R. Redlich Fund and many other donors. C.A. acknowledges support by NASA JWST grants GO-02114, GO-02122, GO-03726, GO-04436, and GO-04522. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; the observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

Data Availability

Data are available at the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST).

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Additional details

Funding

European Research Council
ERC-2019-StG- 626 851622
National Research, Development and Innovation Office
FK-134432
Belgian Federal Science Policy Office
C4000142239

Dates

Available
2025-05-12
Published online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA), Astronomy Department, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)
Publication Status
Published