Astron. Astrophys. 324, L29-L32 (1997)

4. Epilogue

The purpose of this letter is to motivate the community to observe the slowly fading SN 1997ab in the coming years. We believe that we have convinced the reader, that SN 1997ab is possibly the extreme case among the compact SN remnants known so far. SN 1997ab should therefore offer the possibility to help to verify, reject or finetune the theoretical predictions made by Terlevich et al. (1992) concerning the spectral evolution of compact supernova remnants. Observations over the whole electromagnetic spectrum from radio to X-ray wavelengths are promising.

For clarification of the question as to which progenitors produce these unusual SNe, it would also be important to take high-resolution HST images of the parent galaxy when the SN becomes faint enough again.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1997

Online publication: May 26, 1998

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