One of the brightest supernovae has been found, but not all telescopes “see” it

A team of astronomers led by Poonam Chandra of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)

 Charlottesville, Virginia, beganobserve SN 2017hcc 29 days after its explosion. They used spacecraft such as NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Spitzer and Swift telescopes, and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Telescope Array. The observation campaign continued until May 3, 2021. As a result, scientists received important information about the properties and evolution of this supernova.

Research has shown that infrared radiationlate time dominates the spectral energy distribution of SN 2017hcc. It turned out that although this supernova has a very high bolometric luminosity, due to circumstellar interaction it emitted very weak radiation in the X-ray and radio range. Thus, the ratio of X-ray emission to total luminosity is less than 0.0003. This means that some telescopes simply “don’t” see it.

Supernovae (SNe) are powerful and brightstar explosions. They are important for the scientific community because they provide clues to the evolution of stars and galaxies. In general, SNe are divided into two groups based on their atomic spectra: type I and type II. In the spectra of type I CH there is no hydrogen, and in the spectra of type II CH there are spectral lines of hydrogen.

SN 2017hcc (also known as ATLAS17lsn)discovered on October 2, 2017 by the Asteroid Terrestrial–Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) and classified as a Type II SN. The supernova peaked at magnitude 13.7 in about 40–45 days. This indicates an absolute peak magnitude of approximately −20.7 magnitudes at a distance of about 244 million light years. Further observations of the SN 2017hcc revealed its peak bolometric luminosity to be 1.34 tredecillion erg/s, making it one of the brightest type II SNe ever discovered.

Years before the explosion, SN 2017hcc went through a phase of enhanced mass loss. Further research on SN 2017hcc could help expand our knowledge of strongly interacting supernovae.

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On the cover: an artist's vision of a supernova, by M. Kornmesser / ESO