Study investigates a rare Type Icn supernova

Tomasz Nowakowski is a member of the physics.org community.

An international team of astronomy has observed a rare type Icn supernova. The results of the study were published on the preprint server arXiv.

A stellar explosion called a nova is powerful and Luminous. They offer important clues into the evolution of stars and the universe. The two groups are based on their atomic spectrum. The type I and type II have hydrogen in their spectrum.

There is a type of interacting stripped-envelope supernovae called Icn SNe. They have strong, narrow oxygen and carbon lines, but weak or absent hydrogen and helium lines, complicating the stripping mechanism. There are features indicative of circumstellar interaction.

Only five Type Icn SNe have been discovered so far, and the newest addition to the short list is SN 2022. At a distance of about 710 million light years, a faint host galaxy was detected.

A team of astronomer led by Kyle Davis of the University of California, Santa Cruz began photometric and spectroscopic monitoring of the exploded star.

The fifth reported SN Icn and its host galaxy have been presented by us. The researchers wrote in the paper that they had observed the origin of the rare SN explosions and undiscovered endpoints of stellar evolution.

The observations show that the early optical spectrum is dominated by narrow carbon and oxygen features. The escape velocity for a compact massive star is needed to avoid strong hydrogen emission. The astronomer suggests that the progenitor star may have been puffed up by an eruption and out of equilibrium before the explosion.

After the explosion, the study found that there was a rapid decline in red bands and a constant brightness. The other four known types have a high luminosity compared to the other one. The bolometric light curve shows that the ejected mass is at a level of 1.73 solar mass.

According to the researchers, the results show that a star companion needs to strip the progenitor before it explodes to produce a low-velocity outflow. The rarity of SNe Icn may indicate that they are created during a brief or uncommon stage in the evolution of the universe.

There is more information about the type Icn supernova from a dwarf galaxy. There is a book titled "arxiv.2211.05134."

Journal information: arXiv

There is a science network.