THE CRAB NEBULA'S COMPOSITION AND PRECURSOR STAR MASS

2008/06/08 by G. M. MacAlpine, Gordon M. MacAlpine, Timothy J. Satterfield · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-6256/136/5/2152

manuscript in AASTeX, 6 figures in .eps, submitted to Astronomical Journal

arxiv created 2008/06/08 · openalex publication_date 2008/10/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

We present new photoionization calculations for investigating gaseous regions that represent potentially expected stages of nuclear processing in the Crab Nebula supernova remnant. From comparison of the theoretical models with recent, extensive emission-line measurements, most of the emitting gas appears to be nitrogen-poor and carbon-rich. These results suggest that the precursor star had an initial mass ≳ 9.5 M ☉ .

Citations

• A Spectroscopic Study of Nuclear Processing and the Production of Anomalously Strong Lines in the Crab Nebula
• The Evolution and Explosion of Massive Stars. II. Explosive Hydrodynamics and Nucleosynthesis
• CLOUDY 90: Numerical Simulation of Plasmas and Their Spectra

Cited by

• The Status of Multi-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernova Models