Jet-powered explosion of a red supergiant

The jet shown here at 68 seconds is well past the supernova shock and is propogating into the hydrogen envelope of the red supergiant star. The red circle shows the radius of the helium core and the yellow circle shows the carbon/oxygen core. These circles represent the radius the star would have had it lost it's hydrogen envelope, and it's helium envelope respectively to a stellar wind or to a binary companion by Roche lobe overflow. It will eventually breakout of the surface at 80,000,000,000,000 cm after 7820 seconds producing a soft x-ray transient. The jet is powered by one tenth of a percent (0.001) of the rest mass energy which is falling through the inner boundary in the equatorial region (black). The colors represent the logarithm of radial velocity in kilometers per second. The fastest material (red) is travelling at nearly half the speed of light. The spherical blue region is the supernova explosion which contains more than 2.5x10^50 ergs of energy and is traveling at a few thousand kilometers per second. The thin red circle represents the edge of the carbon/oxygen core of the star. The rest of the star exterior to the circle is composed primarily of helium.

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Andrew MacFadyen- andrew@ucolick.org - October 25, 1999
Kerr Hall 237B - (831)459-2774
Lick Observatory and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
UC Santa Cruz, CA 95064, U.S.A.