2015/11/04 by L. Galbany, J. P. Anderson, F. F Rosales-Ortega +14 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Host (biology) #Physics #Star formation #Supernova #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stv2620
15 pages, 7 Figures, 5 Tables. Accepted in MNRAS
arxiv created 2015/11/04 · openalex publication_date 2015/12/03 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv updated 2018/02/20 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a statistical analysis of the environments of 11 supernovae (SNe) which occurred in six nearby galaxies (z ≲ 0.016). All galaxies were observed with MUSE, the high spatial resolution integral-field spectrograph mounted to the 8 m VLT UT4. These data enable us to map the full spatial extent of host galaxies up to ∼3 effective radii. In this way, not only can one characterize the specific host environment of each SN, one can compare their properties with stellar populations within the full range of other environments within the host. We present a method that consists of selecting all H ii regions found within host galaxies from 2D extinction-corrected Hα emission maps. These regions are then characterized in terms of their Hα equivalent widths, star formation rates and oxygen abundances. Identifying H ii regions spatially coincident with SN explosion sites, we are thus able to determine where within the distributions of host galaxy e.g. metallicities and ages each SN is found, thus providing new constraints on SN progenitor properties. This initial pilot study using MUSE opens the way for a revolution in SN environment studies where we are now able to study multiple environment SN progenitor dependencies using a single instrument and single pointing.