Dusty Explosions from Dusty Progenitors: The Physics of SN2008S and the 2008 NGC300-OT

TL;DR

This paper models the physics behind the dust-enshrouded transients SN2008S and NGC300-OT, explaining their luminosity, obscuration, and evolution through shock interactions with dense stellar winds, and predicts their current observability.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed physical model of dust-enshrouded stellar explosions, explaining their luminosity and obscuration, and predicts their current X-ray detectability based on shock and dust reformation processes.

Findings

SN2008S should now be detectable in X-rays.

NGC300-OT remains heavily obscured and less likely to be detected in X-rays.

Progenitors are likely ~9 Msun extreme AGB stars.

Abstract

SN2008S and the 2008 NGC300-OT were explosive transients of stars self-obscured by very dense, dusty stellar winds. An explosive transient with an un-observed shock break-out luminosity of order 10^10 Lsun is required to render the transients little obscured and visible in the optical at their peaks. Such a large break-out luminosity then implies that the progenitor stars were cool, red supergiants, most probably ~9 Msun extreme AGB (EAGB) stars. As the shocks generated by the explosions propagate outward through the dense wind, they produce a shock luminosity in soft X-rays that powers the long-lived luminosity of the transients. Unlike typical cases of transients exploding into a surrounding circumstellar medium, the progenitor winds in these systems are optically thick to soft X-rays, easily absorb radio emission and rapidly reform dust destroyed by the peak luminosity of the transients. As a result, X-rays are absorbed by the gas and the energy is ultimately radiated by the reformed dust. Three years post-peak, both systems are still significantly more luminous than their progenitor stars, but they are again fully shrouded by the re-formed dust and only visible in the mid-IR. The high luminosity and heavy obscuration may make it difficult to determine the survival of the progenitor stars for ~10 years. However, our model indicates that SN2008S, but not the NGC300-OT, should now be a detectable X-ray source. SN2008S has a higher estimated shock velocity and a lower density wind, so the X-rays begin to escape at a much earlier phase.