No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Mass loss from the B3 Ia progenitor star for SN 1987A is revealed by the recent emergence of narrow ultraviolet emission lines. The emitting gas is nitrogen-rich, has low velocity, and may be located a light-year from the supernova. This gives every sign of having been ejected from the SK −69 202 progenitor when it was a red supergiant, prior to its brief and ultimately violent life as a blue supergiant. Changes in the hydrogen line profiles during the early evolution provide a way to estimate the density distribution in the supernova atmosphere, and the mass of hydrogen it contains. A preliminary estimate is that the power-law index of density in the envelope goes as V−11 and the mass that lies above a velocity of 6, 000 km s−1 is between 1 and 6 solar masses.