Deaths of massive stars as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts

Symposium 8 at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science — 10-11 July 2013, Turku, Finland

Symbosium SOC: Seppo Mattila (Turku, co-chair), Jesper Sollerman (Stockholm, co-chair), Johan Fynbo (Copenhagen), Páll Jakobsson (Reykjavik), Rubina Kotak (Belfast), Peter Lundqvist (Stockholm), Stephen Smartt (Belfast)

Core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) mark the end-point of the evolution of massive stars, producing neutron stars and black holes, and in exceptional cases, long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). These phenomena play a vital role in our understanding of stellar evolution, the synthesis of heavy elements, and through feedback processes also in galaxy evolution. Furthemore, as CCSNe come from massive short-lived stars, their explosion rate directly reflects the on-going rate of star formation in their host galaxies, and thus CCSNe are beginning to be used as probes of the cosmic star formation history. Recently, also GRBs have been shown to be less biased star formation indicators than previously thought. While the newly-started wide-field transient surveys are now increasing the SN statistics locally and discovering new classes of transients, the Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects (PESSTO) will provide full spectroscopic time series for a large number of the newly discovered events. The goal of this Symposium is to focus on recent progress in research of CCSNe, their progenitors, circumstellar interaction, and connection with GRBs, as well as on the use of CCSNe and GRBs as tracers of cosmic star formation. By having a single Symposium covering both CCSNe and GRBs we aim to increase the interaction between the two communities.

The programme of the Symposium is available here.

A group photo of participants.