Spectral identification of an ancient supernova using light echoes in the Large Magellanic Cloud

A Rest, T Matheson, S Blondin…�- The Astrophysical�…, 2008 - iopscience.iop.org
A Rest, T Matheson, S Blondin, M Bergmann, DL Welch, NB Suntzeff, RC Smith, K Olsen…
The Astrophysical Journal, 2008iopscience.iop.org
We report the successful identification of the type of the supernova (SN) responsible for the
supernova remnant SNR 0509–675 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using Gemini
spectra of surrounding light echoes. The ability to classify outbursts associated with
centuries-old remnants provides a new window into several aspects of SN research and is
likely to be successful in providing new constraints on additional LMC SNe, as well as their
historical counterparts in the Milky Way (MW). The combined spectrum of echo light from�…
Abstract
We report the successful identification of the type of the supernova (SN) responsible for the supernova remnant SNR 0509–675 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using Gemini spectra of surrounding light echoes. The ability to classify outbursts associated with centuries-old remnants provides a new window into several aspects of SN research and is likely to be successful in providing new constraints on additional LMC SNe, as well as their historical counterparts in the Milky Way (MW). The combined spectrum of echo light from SNR 0509–675 shows broad emission and absorption lines consistent with a SN spectrum. We create a spectral library consisting of 28 SNe Ia and 6 SNe Ib/c that are time-integrated, dust-scattered by LMC dust, and reddened by the LMC and MW. We fit these SN templates to the observed light echo spectrum using\chi^{2} minimization, as well as correlation techniques, and we find that overluminous 1991T-like SNe Ia with\Delta m_ {15}< 0.9 match the observed spectrum best.
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