On the Road to the Supernova: LBVs, Hypergiants, and SN Impostors

通往超新星的道路：LBV、超巨星和 SN 冒名顶替者

• 批准号: 1108890
• 负责人: John Martin
• 金额: $ 6.21万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Springfield
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-01 至 2015-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1108890&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Road; Supernova; LBVs; Hypergiants; SN

This award will fund a combined observational and theoretical study of luminous blue variables, which are massive stars experiencing strong mass loss and evolving to be red supergiants. They are widely believed to the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, but many of these may not explode if the mass lost during their lifetimes is high enough. This team will conduct long-term observations of these variables in several nearby galaxies, in order to get an improved census of these objects, elucidate the mechanisms that may be responsible for giant eruptions, and to better understand the mechanism of mass loss and how stars evolve as they experience episodic (rather than steady) mass loss.Modern supernova surveys are finding a number objects in nearby galaxies which are not true supernovae, the "supernova impostors," which may be objects like eta Carinae that shed 10-20 times the mass of our Sun in a few years. The final stages of these most massive stars are important for a valid picture of stellar astrophysics and they are increasingly significant in cosmology. They are the likely progenitors of Gamma Ray Bursters used as cosmological probes, and many of the first stars in the universe are thought to have been very massive.

该奖项将资助对明亮的蓝色变星的观测和理论研究，这些变星是经历强烈质量损失并演变为红超巨星的大质量恒星。 它们被广泛认为是核心坍缩超新星的祖先，但是如果在它们的生命周期中损失的质量足够高，其中许多可能不会爆炸。 该团队将在几个附近的星系中对这些变量进行长期观测，以便对这些物体进行更好的普查，阐明可能导致巨大爆发的机制，并更好地了解质量损失的机制以及恒星在经历偶发事件时如何演变（而不是稳定的）质量损失。现代超新星调查在附近的星系中发现了一些不是真正的超新星的物体，“超新星冒充者，“这可能是像船底座伊塔星这样的天体，在几年内脱落了10-20倍于我们太阳的质量。 这些最大质量恒星的最后阶段对于恒星天体物理学的有效图像非常重要，并且在宇宙学中越来越重要。它们很可能是伽马射线爆发的祖先，伽马射线爆发被用作宇宙学探测器，宇宙中的许多第一批恒星被认为是非常巨大的。