Constraints for the Progenitor Masses of 17 Historic Core-Collapse Supernovae

Understand

Using resolved stellar photometry measured from archival HST imaging, we generate color-magnitude diagrams of the stars within 50 pc of the locations of historic core-collapse supernovae that took place in galaxies within 8 Mpc.

• We fit these color-magnitude distributions with stellar evolution models to determine the best-fit age distribution of the young population.
• We then translate these age distributions into probability distributions for the progenitor mass of each SNe.
• The measurements are anchored by the main-sequence stars surrounding the event, making them less sensitive to assumptions about binarity, post-main-sequence evolution, or circumstellar dust.