The surprising look of core-collapse Supernova progenitors

 

 

José Groh

(Geneva Observatory)

 

Stars more massive than about 8 Msun end their lives as a supernova (SN), an event of fundamental importance Universe-wide. The morphological appearance of massive stars before the SN event is very uncertain, both from a theoretical and observational perspective. In this talk, I will discuss the latest results of direct detection of SN progenitor stars by chance in images taken several years before the SN explosion. I will then present the latest stellar evolution and atmospheric models of stars at the pre-SN stage developed by our group. Using these models, we are able to predict the high-resolution spectrum and broadband photometry of SN progenitor stars, which can then be directly compared to the observations. I will discuss the surprising predictions of which kind of stars explode as SN, their look before death, and how detectable they are.