2016MNRAS.456L..16F

We present new late-time near-infrared imaging of the site of the nearby core-collapse supernova SN 2012aw, confirming the disappearance of the point source identified by Fraser et al. and Van Dyk et al. as a candidate progenitor in both J and Ks filters. We remeasure the progenitor photometry, and find that both the J and Ks magnitudes of the source are consistent with those quoted in the literature. We also recover a marginal detection of the progenitor in H-band, for which we measure H = 19.67±0.40 mag. Comparing the luminosity of the progenitor to stellar evolutionary models, SN 2012aw appears to have resulted from the explosion of a 12.5±1.5 M_☉ red supergiant.