Events in Physics
Morgan Fraser (Cambridge)
A post-mortem for stars: Core-collapse supernovae and their progenitors
Core-collapse supernovae are the spectacular finale to the life of a massive star. In recent years, considerable progress has been made in directly identifying the stellar progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, most notably in images from the Hubble Space Telescope. From this work, it appears that there is a puzzling absence of hydrogen-rich supernovae from the most massive red supergiants, while binary interaction seems to be crucial for many (or even most) hydrogen-poor supernovae. I will present the most recent results from the ongoing search for core-collapse progenitors, and compare these to both theoretical expectations and the resulting supernova characteristics.