The progenitor of the Vela pulsar

With Gaia parallaxes it is possible to study the stellar populations associated with individual Galactic supernova remnants (SNR) estimate mass of exploding star. Here we analyze luminous stars near Vela pulsar and SNR find that its progenitor was probably (>90%) low (8.1-10.3Msun). The presence O star gamma2 Vel a little over 100 pc from primary ambiguity, as including in analysis volume significantly increases probability (to 5%) higher (>20Msun) progenitors. However, be high Vel's cluster at birth, would have runaway an unbound binary unusually velocity. impediment analyzing large numbers SNRs this manner lack accurate distances. This can likely solved by searching for absorption lines function distance, method which yielded distance agreement direct parallax. If 10Msun external galaxy, 50 search region used extragalactic studies contain only ~10% formed 50~pc around birth ~90% been elsewhere.