Abstract
It has been argued that a substantial fraction of massive stars may end their
lives without an optically bright supernova (SN), but rather collapse to form a
black hole. Such an event would not be detected by current SN surveys, which
are focused on finding bright transients. Kochanek et al. (2008) proposed a
novel survey for such events, using repeated observations of nearby galaxies to
search for the disappearance of a massive star. We present such a survey, using
the first systematic analysis of archival Hubble Space Telescope images of
nearby galaxies with the aim of identifying evolved massive stars which have
disappeared, without an accompanying optically bright supernova. We consider a
sample of 15 galaxies, with at least three epochs of Hubble Space Telescope
imaging taken between 1994 and 2013. Within this data, we find one candidate
which is consistent with a 25-30 solar mass yellow supergiant which has
undergone an optically dark core-collapse.
Users
Please
log in to take part in the discussion (add own reviews or comments).