The Progenitor of the S147 Supernova Remnant

TL;DR

The paper applies Gaia DR3 based CMD analysis to constrain the progenitor mass of the ccSN that produced SNR S147 by comparing observed stellar distributions with single and non interacting binary star populations across 13 age bins. It uses MCMC to infer the age distributions and a mass cutoff set by the known unbound companion HD 37424, finding a strong preference for a high mass progenitor in the range $21.5$–$41.1 M_sun$ with integral probabilities around 83% (single star) and 64% (binary). The luminous stars near S147, including HD 37424, HD 37366, HD 37367, and ET Tau, have ages approximately $10^{6.3}$–$10^{7.1}$ yr and masses compatible with the high mass progenitor scenario, supporting the unbound binary picture. The study highlights a promising Galactic CMD based approach to progenitor inference while noting key limitations due to distance, projection, and sample completeness, and argues for ensemble studies across multiple SNRs to yield robust progenitor statistics.

Abstract

The supernova remnant (SNR) S147 contains the pulsar PSR J0538+2817 and a likely unbound binary companion, HD 37424. It is the only good Galactic candidate for a binary unbound by a core-collapse supernova (SN). Using Gaia DR3 parallaxes and photometry, we select the stars local to SNR S147 in a cylinder with a projected radius of $100$ pc and a parallax range of $0.614 < \varpi < 0.787$ mas (a length of $\simeq 360$ pc). We individually model the most luminous of these stars. The two most luminous single stars are the unbound binary companion, HD 37424, and HD 37367, with estimated masses of $(13.51\pm0.05) M_{\odot}$ and $(14.30\pm0.09) M_{\odot}$, respectively. The two most luminous binary systems are the spectroscopic binary HD 37366 and the eclipsing binary ET Tau that have primary masses of $(20.9\pm0.12) M_{\odot}$ and $(16.7\pm0.09) M_{\odot}$, respectively. We model the Gaia color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of this local stellar population using both single stars and a model consisting of noninteracting binaries using Solar metallicity PARSEC isochrones. For both models, the estimated age distributions of the $439$ $M_{G} < 0$ mag stars favor a high mass progenitor of $21.5M_{\odot}-41.1M_{\odot}$ for the SN.

Figures (13)

• Figure 1: Extinction corrected Gaia DR3 color-magnitude diagram of the stars local to S147 SNR. HD 37424 is the large red star and the other 12 ($M_{G} < -3$ mag) stars are shown with blue small stars. Solar metallicity PARSEC isochrones are shown from $\log_{10}(t/yr) = 6.3$ (solid purple, top left) to $\log_{10}(t/yr) = 9.9$ (solid green, lower right) in steps of 0.3 dex.
• Figure 2: The SED of the eclipsing binary, B8, star ET Tau.
• Figure 3: The SED of BD +26935, a spectroscopic binary with a M2/3 primary star.
• Figure 4: The SED of HD 37366, a spectroscopic binary with an O-type primary star.
• Figure 5: The SED of the B2 IV-V star HD 37367.