Abstract
ABSTRACT The large quantities of dust that have been found in a number of high-redshift galaxies have led to suggestions that core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) are the main sources of their dust and have motivated the measurement of the dust masses formed by local CCSNe. For Cassiopeia A (Cas A), an oxygen-rich remnant of a Type IIb CCSN, a dust mass of 0.6–1.1 M⊙ has already been determined by two different methods, namely (a) from its far-infrared spectral energy distribution and (b) from analysis of the red–blue emission line asymmetries in its integrated optical spectrum. We present a third, independent, method for determining the mass of dust contained within Cas A. This compares the relative fluxes measured in similar apertures from [O iii] far-infrared and visual-region emission lines, taking into account foreground dust extinction, in order to determine internal dust optical depths, from which corresponding dust masses can be obtained. Using this method, we determine a dust mass within Cas A of at least 0.99$^{+0.10}_{-0.09}$ M⊙.
Highlights
The discovery of large quantities of dust in a number of high-redshift (z > 6) galaxies and quasars [e.g. Bertoldi et al 2003, Laporte et al 2017, Watson et al 2015] prompted a shift away from AGB stars being perceived as the primary dust factories in the Universe
It has been proposed that a significant fraction of cosmic dust, at high redshifts, is formed in the ejecta of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), with Morgan and Edmunds [2003] and Dwek et al [2007] estimating that each CCSN would need to produce ≥0.1 M of dust for this to be the case
Apart from the northern LWS-2 and PACS-7 apertures, for which we have argued that all of the De Looze et al [2017] (DL2017) extinction column is in front of the remnant, we will assume that for the remaining apertures only 50 per cent of the DL2017 ISM extinction columns lie in front of the remnant
Summary
The discovery of large quantities of dust in a number of high-redshift (z > 6) galaxies and quasars [e.g. Bertoldi et al 2003, Laporte et al 2017, Watson et al 2015] prompted a shift away from AGB stars being perceived as the primary dust factories in the Universe. DeLaney et al [2010] created a 3D doppler reconstruction of Cas A using Spitzer data, mapping the reverse-shocked ring emitting in [Ar II] and [Ne III], as well as the unshocked interior emission which is bright in [Si II] This led them to adopt a disk model for Cas A tilted away from the plane of the sky. The goal of the current work is to use a new method to determine ejecta dust masses at multiple locations around Cas A, by comparing the relative intensities of far-infrared and optical forbidden emission lines in the same apertures from the same ions of oxygen, either neutral or doubly ionized.
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