VLT detection of a red supergiant progenitor of the type IIP supernova 2008bk

Abstract

We report the identification of a source coincident with the position of the nearby type II-P supernova (SN) 2008bk in high quality optical and near-infrared pre-explosion images from the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). The SN position in the optical and near-infrared pre-explosion images is identified to within about +-70 and +-40 mas, respectively, using post-explosion Ks-band images obtained with the NAOS CONICA adaptive optics system on the VLT. The pre-explosion source detected in four different bands is precisely coincident with SN 2008bk and is consistent with being dominated by a single point source. We determine the nature of the point source using the STARS stellar evolutionary models and find that its colours and luminosity are consistent with the source being a red supergiant progenitor of SN 2008bk with an initial mass of 8.5 +- 1.0 Msun.

4 pages, 2 figures, accepted to ApJ Letters

References in corpus (6)

• The death of massive stars - I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of type II-P supernovae
• The Effective Temperatures and Physical Properties of Magellanic Cloud Red Supergiants: The Effects of Metallicity
• JHK Observations of Faint Standard Stars in the Mauna Kea Near-Infrared Photometric System
• Optical and infrared observations of the Type IIP SN2002hh from day 3 to 397
• Ruling out a massive-assymptoic giant-branch star as the progenitor of supernova 2005cs
• A Spitzer Space Telescope study of SN 2002hh: an infrared echo from a Type IIP supernova

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