Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society 49: 00 ∼ 00, 2016 December c 2016. The Korean Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. http://jkas.kas.org THE KOREAN 1592–1593 RECORD OF A GUEST STAR: AN ‘IMPOSTOR’ OF THE CASSIOPEIA ASUPERNOVA? Changbom Park1, Sung-Chul Yoon2, and Bon-Chul Koo2,3 1Korea Institute for Advanced Study, 85 Hoegi-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02455, Korea;
[email protected] 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea
[email protected],
[email protected] 3Visiting Professor, Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul 02455, Korea Received |; accepted | Abstract: The missing historical record of the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova (SN) event implies a large extinction to the SN, possibly greater than the interstellar extinction to the current SN remnant. Here we investigate the possibility that the guest star that appeared near Cas A in 1592{1593 in Korean history books could have been an `impostor' of the Cas A SN, i.e., a luminous transient that appeared to be a SN but did not destroy the progenitor star, with strong mass loss to have provided extra circumstellar extinction. We first review the Korean records and show that a spatial coincidence between the guest star and Cas A cannot be ruled out, as opposed to previous studies. Based on modern astrophysical findings on core-collapse SN, we argue that Cas A could have had an impostor and derive its anticipated properties. It turned out that the Cas A SN impostor must have been bright (MV = −14:7 ± 2:2 mag) and an amount of dust with visual extinction of ≥ 2:8 ± 2:2 mag should have formed in the ejected envelope and/or in a strong wind afterwards.