Massive stars dying alone: the remote environment of SN 2010jp and its associated late-time source

Abstract

We present late-time images of the site of the peculiar jet-driven TypeIIn supernova SN2010jp, including HST images taken 2-5 yr post explosion and deep ground-based images over a similar time. These are used to characterise its unusually remote environment and to constrain the progenitor's initial mass and age. The position of SN2010jp is found to reside along a chain of diffuse starlight that is probably an outer spiral arm or tidal tail of the interacting galaxy pair NGC2207/IC2163. There is one bright HII region projected within 1 kpc, and there is faint extended Halpha emission immediately surrounding the continuum source at the position of SN2010jp, which has $M_{F555W}=-7.7(\pm 0.2)$ mag. In principle, the lingering light could arise from late-time circumstellar material (CSM) interaction, an evolved supergiant, a host star cluster, or some combination of these. Steady flux over 3 yr and a lack of strong, spatially unresolved Halpha emission make ongoing CSM interaction unlikely. If an evolved supergiant dominates, its observed luminosity implies an initial mass of roughly 22 $M_{\odot }$ and an age older than roughly 8 Myr. If the source is a star cluster, then its colour and absolute magnitude imply an age of 8-13 Myr and a modest cluster initial mass of log($M/M_{\odot }$) = 3.6-3.8. Extended Halpha emission out to a radius of 30 pc reveals a faint evolved HII region, pointing to recent star formation with at least one late O-type star. Based on these various clues, we conclude that the progenitor of SN2010jp had a likely initial mass of 18-22 $M_{\odot }$.

MNRAS accepted, 10 pages

References in corpus (13)

• Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis Version 2.1: construction, observational verification and new results
• The death of massive stars - I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of type II-P supernovae
• The Effects of Stellar Rotation. II. A Comprehensive Set of Starburst99 Models
• SN 2006tf: Precursor Eruptions and the Optically Thick Regime of Extremely Luminous Type IIn Supernovae
• Luminous Blue Variables are Antisocial: Their Isolation Implies that they are Kicked Mass Gainers in Binary Evolution
• The Initial Masses of the Red Supergiant Progenitors to Type-II Supernovae
• Numerical simulations of super-luminous supernovae of type IIn
• Discovery of a nearby twin of SN1987A's nebula around the luminous blue variable HD168625: Was Sk--69 202 an LBV?
• Evolution of Mass Functions of Coeval Stars through Wind Mass Loss and Binary Interactions
• The `Red Supergiant Problem': the upper luminosity boundary of type-II supernova progenitors
• Constraints on core-collapse supernova progenitors from correlations with H-alpha emission
• Massive stars dying alone: The extremely remote environment of SN 2009ip
• Isolated OB Associations in Stripped HI Gas Clouds

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Circumstellar Medium Interaction in SN 2018lab, A Low-Luminosity II-P Supernova observed with TESS
• The disappearances of six supernova progenitors