Exclusion of a luminous red giant as a companion star to the progenitor of supernova SN 2011fe (original) (raw)

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Maoz and S. Starrfield for comments, and the staff of the W. M. Keck Observatory, especially J. Lyke and R. Campbell, for their assistance in obtaining the NIRC adaptive optics imaging. P.P. acknowledges discussions on symbiotic binaries with J. Mikolajewska. M.M.K. acknowledges support by NASA’s Hubble Fellowship and the Carnegie-Princeton Fellowship. J.S.B.’s group was partially supported by NASA. J.S.B., A.V.F., L.B. and S.W.J. acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation. A.V.F.’s group at UC Berkeley, and the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) and its ongoing operation, have received financial assistance from NASA, Gary and Cynthia Bengier, the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, the Sylvia and Jim Katzman Foundation, and the TABASGO Foundation. E.O.O. is supported by an Einstein Fellowship from NASA. M.M.S. and J.B. acknowledge the support of Hilary Lipsitz and the American Museum of Natural History for essential funding. M.S. acknowledges support from the Royal Society. Some of the data presented here 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. Observations were obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Palomar Transient Factory project, a scientific collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, La Cumbres Observatory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, provided staff, computational resources, and data storage for this project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-3411, California, USA
    Weidong Li, Joshua S. Bloom, Adam A. Miller, S. Bradley Cenko, Peter E. Nugent, Joseph W. Richards, Alexei V. Filippenko, Mohan Ganeshalingam, Jeffrey M. Silverman & Ken J. Shen
  2. Department of Physics (Astrophysics), University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK,
    Philipp Podsiadlowski, Mark Sullivan & Kate Maguire
  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, 08854, New Jersey, USA
    Saurabh W. Jha, Curtis McCully & Brandon Patel
  4. Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Goleta, 93117, California, USA
    D. Andrew Howell
  5. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA
    D. Andrew Howell & Lars Bildsten
  6. Computational Cosmology Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California 94720, USA,
    Peter E. Nugent
  7. Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, 85287-1504, Arizona, USA
    Nathaniel R. Butler
  8. Cahill Center for Astrophysics 249-17, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA
    Eran O. Ofek & S. R. Kulkarni
  9. Benoziyo Center for Astrophysics, Faculty of Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel,
    Eran O. Ofek
  10. Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, 91101, California, USA
    Mansi M. Kasliwal
  11. Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-7450, California, USA
    Joseph W. Richards
  12. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 96822, Hawaii, USA
    Alan Stockton & Hsin-Yi Shih
  13. Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA
    Lars Bildsten
  14. Department of Astrophysics, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th Street, New York, New York 10024-5192, USA,
    Michael M. Shara & Joanne Bibby
  15. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St George Street, Toronto M5S 3H4, Ontario, Canada,
    Nicholas M. Law
  16. School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel,
    Dovi Poznanski
  17. IPMU, University of Tokyo, Kashiwanoha 5-1-5, Kashiwa-shi, Chiba, Japan,
    Robert M. Quimby

Authors

  1. Weidong Li
  2. Joshua S. Bloom
  3. Philipp Podsiadlowski
  4. Adam A. Miller
  5. S. Bradley Cenko
  6. Saurabh W. Jha
  7. Mark Sullivan
  8. D. Andrew Howell
  9. Peter E. Nugent
  10. Nathaniel R. Butler
  11. Eran O. Ofek
  12. Mansi M. Kasliwal
  13. Joseph W. Richards
  14. Alan Stockton
  15. Hsin-Yi Shih
  16. Lars Bildsten
  17. Michael M. Shara
  18. Joanne Bibby
  19. Alexei V. Filippenko
  20. Mohan Ganeshalingam
  21. Jeffrey M. Silverman
  22. S. R. Kulkarni
  23. Nicholas M. Law
  24. Dovi Poznanski
  25. Robert M. Quimby
  26. Curtis McCully
  27. Brandon Patel
  28. Kate Maguire
  29. Ken J. Shen

Contributions

W.L., J.S.B., S.W.J., C.M. and B.P. analysed the Hubble Space Telescope photometry in the context of progenitor limits. P.P. contributed the analysis of progenitor models. A.A.M., J.W.R. and S.B.C. analysed historical imaging from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) and KAIT in the context of nova limits. M.M.K. and K.J.S. provided the analysis of Spitzer observations. M.M.S. and J.B. provided analysis of the Hubble Space Telescope imaging. M.M.S. also contributed interpretation of the progenitor limits. N.R.B., E.O.O. and L.B. contributed analysis and interpretation of the historical X-ray imaging. D.P., R.M.Q., S.R.K., N.M.L., E.O.O., S.B.C., M.S., D.A.H., J.S.B., P.E.N., M.M.K., L.B. and K.M. were responsible for obtaining, reducing, and analysing the PTF observations. A.S. and H.-Y.S. obtained the Keck adaptive optics imaging and S.B.C. reduced and analysed those images. A.V.F., M.G., W.L. and J.M.S. were responsible for the KAIT imaging and analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence toWeidong Li.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Li, W., Bloom, J., Podsiadlowski, P. et al. Exclusion of a luminous red giant as a companion star to the progenitor of supernova SN 2011fe.Nature 480, 348–350 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10646

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