Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2012 Recurrent novae and Type Ia supernova progenitors Ashley Sara Pagnotta Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Pagnotta, Ashley Sara, "Recurrent novae and Type Ia supernova progenitors" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1602. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1602 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. RECURRENT NOVAE AND TYPE IA SUPERNOVA PROGENITORS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Physics and Astronomy by Ashley Sara Pagnotta B.A., Physics, Texas A&M University, 2007 B.A., Mathematics, Texas A&M University, 2007 M.S., Physics, Louisiana State University, 2010 May 2012 Dedication For everyone who has ever gazed upon the night sky with wonder. \We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan \I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." Sarah Williams, The Old Astronomer to His Pupil ii Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents, Tony and Margaret Pagnotta, and my brother, Alex Pagnotta, for their never-ending support and encouragement as I have pursued my dreams. I would also like to thank my advisor, Bradley Schaefer, for consistently expecting more of me than I thought myself capable of. His guidance and instruction have been invaluable. Many members of the LSU Department of Physics and Astronomy have taught me in and out of the classroom over the past five years. In particular my committee members Robert Hynes, Juhan Frank, and Gabriela Gonzalez, as well as Geoffrey Clayton and Arlo Landolt, have been instrumental in my success. Thanks also to my collaborators Eric Schlegel and Michael Shara for many helpful discussions and even more letters of recommendation. I have been blessed to have a number of wonderful math and science teachers over the years, who deserve many thanks: Stephanie Ingle, Loweta Jorgensen, and Onnie Sherrer at Kingwood High School, and Roland Allen, Harold Boas, N. Sivakumar, and Michael Stecher at Texas A&M University. To the grad students and postdocs who shared their advice and experiences, I am forever indebted: Jen Andrews, Jeff Kissel, and Shannon Fritz, for more than I could ever express, but most especially for their friendship; Sarah Caudill, my writing partner; Andrew Collazzi and Limin Xiao, fellow group members extraordinaire; Brent Budden, Zach Byerly, Tiffany Driscoll Barboza, Nicole Gugliucci, Azadeh Keivani, Valerie Mikles, Sherry Myers, Geoff and Gena Nichols, Bill Plick, James Rodi, Erin Ryan, and Emma Walker, for exceptional amounts of help and encouragement. Thank you to my non-physics friends, most especially Amanda Borowski, Amy Palmer, Erin Greenberg, Liz Cooke, Kim Guillot, Sara DeRosa, and Kristin Budden, who never failed to listen when I rambled incessantly about exploding stars. Along the same lines, thank you to my knitting groups, both analog and digital, who kept me laughing. iii Many thanks go to the staff at the Harvard and Sonneberg Plate Archives, especially Alison Doane, Jaime Pepper, Josh Grindlay, and Ed Los at Harvard, and Peter Kroll and Klaus L¨ochel at Sonneberg, for their help and hospitality. The following observers contributed to the 2010 eruption of U Sco; we could not have had a successful observing campaign without them: Arlo Landolt, James Clem, Kim Page, Julian Osborne, Gerald Handler, Fred Walter, Douglas Hoffman, Sebastien Lepine, Michael Bode, Matthew Darnley, Hannah Worters, Bill Allen, Tom Krajci, Berto Monard, Robert Rea, Thomas Richards, George Roberts, William Stein, Chris Stockdale, Jennie McCormick, Sean Dvorak, Tomas Gomez, Barbara Harris, Arne Henden, George Sjoberg, Thiam Guan Tan, Matthew Templeton, Arto Oksanen, Seiichiro Kiyota, and Hiroyuki Maehara. This work has been supported in part by National Science Foundation grants AST- 0708079 and AST-1109420, the LSU Board of Regents, the LSU Graduate School, the Louisiana Space Consortium, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the Ameri- can Astronomical Society. iv Table of Contents Dedication . ii Acknowledgments . iii List of Tables . vii List of Figures . ix Abstract . xii 1. Introduction . 1 1.1 Classical and Recurrent Novae . 1 1.2 Type Ia Supernovae . 5 1.3 Type Ia Supernova Progenitors . 9 1.4 This Work . 10 2. Recurrent Nova Demographics: A Masquerade . 11 2.1 Recurrent Nova Demographics . 11 2.2 Recurrent Nova Candidate Criteria . 13 2.3 Previously-Proposed Recurrent Nova Candidates . 24 2.4 Recurrent Nova Candidate Search . 31 2.5 Recurrent Nova Fraction in Classical Nova Lists . 32 2.6 Searches for Prior Eruptions . 48 2.7 Implications . 63 3. T Pyxidis: Astronomical Archaeology . 65 3.1 The Unusual T Pyx . 65 3.2 The Nova Shell Around T Pyx . 66 3.3 New Hubble Space Telescope Observations . 66 3.4 Expansion of the Nova Shell . 71 3.5 Knot Brightness . 78 3.6 Shell Structure and Mass . 79 3.7 A New Model For T Pyx . 83 3.8 The Unexpected 2011 Eruption of T Pyx . 89 3.9 T Pyx as a Type Ia Supernova Progenitor . 91 4. The 2010 Eruption of U Scorpii: A Command Performance . 94 4.1 Eruption Prediction . 94 4.2 The USCO2009 Collaboration . 95 4.3 The USCO2010 Eruption . 96 4.4 Multi-Wavelength Light Curve . 98 4.5 Swift Observations . 100 4.6 Universal Decline Law . 102 4.7 Fast Time Series Observations . 110 4.8 Spectral Energy Distribution . 130 4.9 Masses . 130 4.10 Spectra of the 2010 Eruption . 135 4.11 Implications . 136 v 5. Supernova Remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud: A Treasure Hunt . 138 5.1 Type Ia Supernova Progenitors . 138 5.2 Type Ia Supernova Leftovers . 139 5.3 Type Ia Supernova Remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud . 144 5.4 SNR 0509-67.5 . 144 5.5 SNR 0519-69.0 . 159 5.6 SNR 0509-68.7 . 170 5.7 SNR 0505-67.9 . 172 5.8 Implications . 179 6. Conclusions . 182 Bibliography . 188 Appendix A Data Reduction and Analysis . 202 A.1 Data Reduction Philosophy . 202 A.2 Ground-Based Instruments and Photometry . 207 A.3 Hubble Space Telescope . 213 A.4 Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Telescope . 216 Appendix B Permission Statements . 219 Appendix C U Sco 2010 SMARTS+SAAO Data Table . 222 Vita . 234 vi List of Tables 1.1 The Known Galactic Recurrent Novae . 2 2.1 Efficiency of RN Identication Characteristics . 14 2.2 Properties of the Known Recurrent Novae . 33 2.3 Properties of the Classical Novae . 34 2.4 Properties of the Good Recurrent Nova Candidates . 39 2.5 Recurrent Nova Fractions . 41 2.6 Recurrent Nova Discovery Rates . 45 2.7 Plate Search Status | Strong Recurrent Nova Candidates . 52 2.8 Plate Search Status | Weaker Recurrent Nova Candidates . 53 3.1 Knot Summary . 70 4.1 USCO2010 V -Band Observations . 111 4.2 Trend Line for Eruption Light Curve . 117 4.3 Daily U Sco Fluxes . 132 4.4 Daily U Sco Luminosities . 134 5.1 Candidate Progenitor Classes . 143 5.2 Four Type Ia Supernova Remnants in the LMC . 146 5.3 Stars Near the Center of SNR 0509-67.5 . 147 5.4 Positions in SNR 0509-67.5 . 149 5.5 Positions in SNR 0519-69.0 . 162 5.6 Stars Inside Central Error Circle for SNR 0519-69.0 . 165 5.7 Positions in SNR 0509-68.7 . 170 5.8 Stars Inside Central Error Circle for SNR 0509-68.7 . 172 5.9 Positions in SNR 0505-67.9 . 174 5.10 Stars Inside Central Error Circle for SNR 0505-67.9 . 177 vii A.1 Sample IRAF phot Parameters . 211 C.1 U Sco 2010 Eruption Multi-Wavelength Light Curve Data . 223 viii List of Figures 1.1 The Recurrent Nova U Scorpii . 4 1.2 Supernova 1994D . 6 1.3 Supernova Hubble Diagram . 8 2.1 Amplitude/t3 Relation . ..