Subarcsecond-resolution Imaging of M51 with the International LOFAR Telescope

Abstract

We present an International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) subarcsecond-resolution image of the nearby galaxy M51 with a beam size of 0.″436 × 0.″366 and rms of 46 μJy. We compare this image with a European VLBI Network study of M51 and discuss the supernovae in this galaxy, which have not yet been probed at these low radio frequencies. We find a flux density of 0.97 mJy for SN 2011dh in the ILT image, which is about five times smaller than the flux density reported by the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS) at 6″ resolution using the same data set without the international stations. This difference makes evident the need for LOFAR international baselines to reliably obtain flux density measurements of compact objects in nearby galaxies. Our LOFAR flux density measurement of SN 2011dh directly translates into fitting the radio light curves for the supernova and constraining the mass-loss rates of the progenitor star. We do not detect two other supernovae in the same galaxy, SN 1994I and SN 2005cs, and our observations place limits on the evolution of both supernovae at radio wavelengths. We also discuss the radio emission from the center of M51, in which we detect the active galactic nucleus and other parts of the nuclear emission in the galaxy, with a possible detection of Component N. We discuss a few other sources, including the detection of a high-mass X-ray binary not detected by LoTSS but with a flux density in the ILT image that matches well with higher-frequency catalogs.