The supernova that made us rethink stellar evolution and binary stars: Supernova SN 1987A

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• Athira Menon (Amsterdam)
• Wednesday 06 February 2019, 14:30-15:30
• Physics West Library.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Sean McGee.

It has been nearly 32 years since the discovery of the most-well observed supernova in history: SN 1987A , that exploded in the Large Magellanic cloud. It belonged to the most commonly occurring type of supernovae (a Type II event), but its peculiarity made us relook at the physics of stellar evolution and supernovae explosions. The progenitor identified for SN 1987A was not a red supergiant as expected from standard theory at the time, but a blue supergiant. The observational signatures of this blue supergiant indicate that it could have evolved from the merger of a massive binary system, providing evidence that such mergers do take place. We know from massive star surveys that nearly 30-40% of all interacting binaries are expected to merge. This talk will focus on the evolution of the progenitor of SN 1987A from a binary merger scenario, and present the first set of stellar evolution models that can simultaneously match the progenitor and the light curve of the supernova.

This talk is part of the Astrophysics Talks Series series.

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• Astrophysics Talks Series
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• Physics West Library
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