The dusty red supergiant progenitor and the local environment of the Type II SN 2023ixf in M101

Understand

As one of the closest supernovae (SNe) in the last decade, SN 2023ixf is an unprecedented target to investigate the progenitor star that exploded.

• However, there is still significant uncertainty in the reported progenitor properties.
• In this work, we present a detailed study of the progenitor of SN 2023ixf with two independent analyses.
• We first modelled its spectral energy distribution (SED) based on Hubble Space Telescope optical, Spitzer mid-infrared (IR), and ground-based near-IR data.