Nature paper sheds lights on life of a massive star before supernovae

A Physics and Astronomy researcher is one of the lead authors on a paper published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature.

Dr Mark Sullivan was one of a team of international researchers that detected a mass-loss episode in a massive star 40 days before it exploded as a supernova.

Their observations are published in the latest online edition of Nature in a paper entitled A penultimate outburst from a massive star one month prior to terminal explosion.

Mark worked with colleagues in Israel and the USA establishing a connection between a mass-loss episode and the final supernova explosion. The discovery will enable researchers to shed new light on what happens to a pre-supernova (massive star) before it explodes.

Massive stars are between eight and 100 times the mass of the Sun and spend much of their lives fusing the light element hydrogen into increasingly heavier elements such as helium, oxygen and carbon. Eventually there is almost nothing left except an iron core and this core eventually collapses releasing a tremendous amount of energy in a supernova explosion that can be seen from Earth.

Scientists have long suspected that the dying star may shed part of its material shell before it self-destructs but it is only recently that evidence has been discovered to support this.

The research team used supernova explosions detected as part of the Palomar Transient Factory, which uses the Samuel Oschin Telescope in Southern California. Using an algorithm developed by Mark they hunted in archived data for pre-supernova outburst activity.

“Any theory that explains the supernova explosion itself must also explain the presence of the precursor, so our new observations and the results of our ongoing studies will provide valuable constraints on explosion models,” said Mark.

Mark is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and has recently moved to the University of Southampton to lead the exploration into the fields of supernovae and dark energy research.

To read the paper in Nature go to http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v494/n7435/full/nature11877.html