1211.5388 (Noam Soker et al.)

Explaining the supernova impostor sn 2009ip as mergerburst    [PDF]

Noam Soker, Amit Kashi

We propose that the energetic major outburst of the supernovae (SN) impostor SN 2009ip in September 2012 (outburst 2012b) was a mergerburst event, where two massive stars merged. The previous outbursts of 2009 and 2011 occurred during near periastron passages of the binary system prior to the merger, in a similar manner to the luminosity peaks in the ninetieth century Great Eruption of the massive binary system Eta Carinae. The major 2012b outburst and the 2012a pre-outburst, resemble the light curve of the mergerburst event V838 Mon. A merger of stars with masses of M_1~100Mo and M_2~0.2-0.4M_1 can account for the energy of SN 2009ip. The ejected nebula is expected to have a bipolar structure. The observed fast blue-shifted absorption suggests that we observe the system along the polar direction.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.5388