[71.07] VLBA Observations of SN 2001em: Supernova, Misdirected Gamma-Ray Burster, or Both?

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 71 Supernovae
Poster, Tuesday, January 11, 2005, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall

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[71.07] VLBA Observations of SN 2001em: Supernova, Misdirected Gamma-Ray Burster, or Both?

C. J. Stockdale (Marquette Univ.), S. D. Van Dyk (SSC/Caltech), K. W. Weiler (NRL), R. A. Sramek (NRAO), N. Panagia (STScI), M. P. Rupen (NRAO), B. Paczynski (Princeton), K. W. Weiler (NRL)

We present Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) observations of Supernova (SN) 2001em. Initially detected on September 15, 2001 (Papenkova & Li 2001) and classified as a type Ic SN on October 20, 2001 (Filippenko & Chornock 2001), SN 2001em was later reclassified as a Type IIn SN (Soderberg, Frail, & Wieringa 2004). SN 2001em was not well studied until a Very Large Array 3.6 cm radio search of type Ib/Ic SNe within 100 Mpc detected radio emission in excess of 10²⁸ erg s^-1 Hz^-1 (for 80 Mpc distance) in mid October 2003 (Stockdale et al. 2004). This is roughly 50 times more radio luminous than SN 1998bw was at a comparable age. X-ray emission was detected by Pooley & Lewin (2004) in excess of 10⁴¹ erg s^-1 (for 80 Mpc distance), making it one of the brightest X-ray SNe ever observed. We measured this source in July 2004 with the VLBA at 3.6 cm in an attempt to determine if radio structure was present. We present our new results and discuss their implications at this meeting.

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