E A Zimmerman, I Irani, P Chen, A Gal-Yam, S Schulze, D A Perley, J Sollerman, A V Filippenko, T Shenar, O Yaron, S Shahaf, R J Bruch, E O Ofek, A De Cia, T G Brink, Y Yang, S S Vasylyev, S Ben Ami, M Aubert, A Badash, J S Bloom, P J Brown, K De, G Dimitriadis, C Fransson, C Fremling, K Hinds, A Horesh, J P Johansson, M M Kasliwal, S R Kulkarni, D Kushnir, C Martin, M Matuzewski, R C McGurk, A A Miller, J Morag, J D Neil, P E Nugent, R S Post, N Z Prusinski, Y Qin, A Raichoor, R Riddle, M Rowe, B Rusholme, I Sfaradi, K M Sjoberg, M Soumagnac, R D Stein, N L Strotjohann, J H Terwel, T Wasserman, J Wise, A Wold, L Yan, K Zhang
The early evolution of a supernova (SN) can reveal information about the environment and the progenitor star. When a star explodes in vacuum, the first photons to escape from its surface appear as a brief, hours-long shock-breakout flare1,2 , followed by a cooling phase of emission. However, for stars exploding within a distribution of dense, optically thick circumstellar material (CSM), the first photons escape from the material beyond the stellar edge and the duration of the initial flare can extend to several days, during which the escaping emission indicates photospheric heating3 ...
March 2024: Nature