We present the discovery of a red supergiant star that exploded as supernova 2003gd in the nearby spiral galaxy M74. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the Gemini Telescope imaged this galaxy 6 to 9 months before the supernova explosion, and subsequent HST images confirm the positional coincidence of the supernova with a single resolved star that is a red supergiant of [fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} {amssymb} {amsfonts} {amsmath} {empty} {document} \(8₋₂⁺⁴\) {document} solar masses. This confirms both stellar evolution models and supernova theories predicting that cool red supergiants are the immediate progenitor stars of type II–plateau supernovae.
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Smartt et al. (2004) studied this question.
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