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Published May 10, 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

Dust and the Type II-plateau Supernova 2004dj

Abstract

We present mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy of a Type II-plateau supernova, SN 2004dj, obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, spanning 106-1393 days after explosion. MIR photometry plus optical/near-IR observations are also reported. An early-time MIR excess is attributed to emission from non-silicate dust formed within a cool dense shell (CDS). Most of the CDS dust condensed between 50 days and 165 days, reaching a mass of 0.3 × 10^(–5) M_☉. Throughout the observations, much of the longer wavelength (>10 μm) part of the continuum is explained as an IR echo from interstellar dust. The MIR excess strengthened at later times. We show that this was due to thermal emission from warm, non-silicate dust formed in the ejecta. Using optical/near-IR line profiles and the MIR continua, we show that the dust was distributed as a disk whose radius appeared to be shrinking slowly. The disk radius may correspond to a grain destruction zone caused by a reverse shock which also heated the dust. The dust-disk lay nearly face-on, had high opacities in the optical/near-IR regions, but remained optically thin in the MIR over much of the period studied. Assuming a uniform dust density, the ejecta dust mass by 996 days was (0.5 ± 0.1) × 10^(–4) M_☉ and exceeded 10^(–4) M_☉ by 1393 days. For a dust density rising toward the center the limit is higher. Nevertheless, this study suggests that the amount of freshly synthesized dust in the SN 2004dj ejecta is consistent with that found from previous studies and adds further weight to the claim that such events could not have been major contributors to the cosmic dust budget.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 November 30; accepted 2011 March 10; published 2011 April 25. We thank J. Vinkó for providing us with digitized versions of his optical spectra. The work presented here is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, the W. M. Keck Observatory, the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), and the 2.4 m Hiltner Telescope of the MDM Observatory. The Spitzer Space Telescope is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. The W. M. Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; it was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We extend special gratitude to those of Hawaiian ancestry on whose sacred mountain we are privileged to be guests. The WHT is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. Financial support for this research was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech (specifically grant number 1322321 in the case of A.V.F.). A.V.F. gratefully acknowledges additional support from NSF grant AST-0908886 and the TABASGO Foundation. P.A.H. was supported by NSF grants AST-1008962 and 0708855. S.M. acknowledges support from the Academy of Finland (project 8120503). J.S. is a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Research Fellow supported by a grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. J.C.W gratefully acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-0707769. The Dark Cosmology Centre is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.

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