Study of the NGC 2770 interstellar medium through Hα, millimetric and optical polarimetric data of SN 2008D and SN 2007uy Original Research Article

We present the preliminary results of the recent Hα narrow-band imaging carried out for NGC 2770 with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) equipped with OSIRIS. We put the polarization measurements reported in for SN 2007uy and SN 2008D in the context of the morphological information inferred from the Hα imaging. We estimated the orientation of the interstellar polarization (ISP) at the position of SN 2007uy and, most interestingly, at the site of SN 2008D which has been subject of an intensive debate due to its possible connection with Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Hα imaging reveals a clumpy interstellar medium (ISM) composed of hundreds of compact emitting regions, for which we determined their sizes. The derived size for the Hα emitting region coincident with SN 2008D is consistent with the ISM cell size limits imposed by based on millimetric data. A deeper data analysis is under way and will be published elsewhere. This article represents the first attempt to study the site of a possible GRB-like event combining millimetric, polarimetric and narrow-band data.