Landing page for project EB107

The end-of-life mass-loss of massive stars is complex and poorly understood: often mass-ejections occur shortly before the SN explosion, and may be highly anisotropic. SN2014C presents a rare opportunity to directly image a SN shock as it interacts with and is decelerated by the circumstellar medium (CSM) originating from such mass loss, and which has stayed radio-bright so its evolution can be monitored for years with VLBI. Although it exploded as a H-poor Type Ib in a low-density region, after ~1yr, H appeared in the spectrum and sudden rise in X-ray and radio emission implied the shock had entered a region of dense, H-rich CSM. Our 2021 EVN observations (age 7.9 yr) show a distinct increase in deceleration since age 5yr, and suggest an unusual bipolar structure. We propose 14h of new EVN VLBI observations of SN2014C at age ~10.3yr, to monitor the deceleration and evolution of the structure, and confirm the bipolar structure with higher relative resolution. With our wide range of existing supporting multi-wavelength observations we aim for a consistent physical picture of this supernova and the episodic and possibly anisotropic mass-loss of its progenitor

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197