Identifying the SN 2022acko progenitor with JWST

Understand

We report on analysis using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to identify a candidate progenitor star of the Type II-plateau supernova SN 2022acko in the nearby, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300.

• To our knowledge, our discovery represents the first time JWST has been used to localize a progenitor system in pre-explosion archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images.
• We astrometrically registered a JWST NIRCam image from 2023 January, in which the SN was serendipitously captured, to pre-SN HST F160W and F814W images from 2017 and 2004, respectively.
• An object corresponding precisely to the SN position has been isolated with reasonable confidence.