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ABSTRACT The origin of the diverse light-curve shapes of Type II supernovae (SNe), and whether they come from similar or distinct progenitors, has been actively discussed for decades. Here, we report spectropolarimetry of two fast declining Type II (Type IIL) SNe: SN 2013ej and SN 2017ahn. SN 2013ej exhibited high continuum polarization from very soon after the explosion to the radioactive tail phase with time-variable polarization angles. The origin of this polarimetric behaviour can be interpreted as the combination of two different aspherical structures, namely an aspherical interaction of the SN ejecta with circumstellar matter (CSM) and an inherently aspherical explosion. Aspherical explosions are a common feature of slowly declining Type II (Type IIP) SNe. By contrast, SN 2017ahn showed low polarization not only in the photospheric phase but also in the radioactive tail phase. This low polarization in the tail phase, which has never before been observed in other Type IIP/L SNe, suggests that the explosion of SN 2017ahn was nearly spherical. These observations imply that Type IIL SNe have, at least, two different origins: they result from stars that have different explosion properties and/or different mass-loss processes. This fact might indicate that 13ej-like Type IIL SNe originate from a similar progenitor to those of Type IIP SNe accompanied by an aspherical CSM interaction, while 17ahn-like Type IIL SNe come from a more massive progenitor with less hydrogen in its envelope. 

ABSTRACT Type IIP supernovae (SNe IIP), which represent the most common class of core-collapse (CC) SNe, show a rapid increase in continuum polarization just after entering the tail phase. This feature can be explained by a highly asymmetric helium core, which is exposed when the hydrogen envelope becomes transparent. Here we report the case of an SN IIP (SN 2017gmr) that shows an unusually early rise of the polarization, ≳30 d before the start of the tail phase. This implies that SN 2017gmr is an SN IIP that has very extended asphericity. The asymmetries are not confined to the helium core, but reach out to a significant part of the outer hydrogen envelope, hence clearly indicating a marked intrinsic diversity in the aspherical structure of CC explosions. These observations provide new constraints on the explosion mechanism, where viable models must be able to produce such extended deviations from spherical symmetry, and account for the observed geometrical diversity. 

Context. In November 2019, eROSITA on board of the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory started to map the entire sky in X-rays. After the four-year survey program, it will reach a flux limit that is about 25 times deeper than ROSAT. During the SRG performance verification phase, eROSITA observed a contiguous 140 deg 2 area of the sky down to the final depth of the eROSITA all-sky survey (eROSITA Final Equatorial-Depth Survey; eFEDS), with the goal of obtaining a census of the X-ray emitting populations (stars, compact objects, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and active galactic nuclei) that will be discovered over the entire sky. Aims. This paper presents the identification of the counterparts to the point sources detected in eFEDS in the main and hard samples and their multi-wavelength properties, including redshift. Methods. To identifyy the counterparts, we combined the results from two independent methods ( NWAY and ASTROMATCH ), trained on the multi-wavelength properties of a sample of 23k XMM-Newton sources detected in the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey DR8. Then spectroscopic redshifts and photometry from ancillary surveys were collated to compute photometric redshifts. Results. Of the eFEDS sources, 24 774 of 27 369 have reliable counterparts (90.5%) in the main sample and 231 of 246 sourcess (93.9%) have counterparts in the hard sample, including 2514 (3) sources for which a second counterpart is equally likely. By means of reliable spectra, Gaia parallaxes, and/or multi-wavelength properties, we have classified the reliable counterparts in both samples into Galactic (2695) and extragalactic sources (22 079). For about 340 of the extragalactic sources, we cannot rule out the possibility that they are unresolved clusters or belong to clusters. Inspection of the distributions of the X-ray sources in various optical/IR colour-magnitude spaces reveal a rich variety of diverse classes of objects. The photometric redshifts are most reliable within the KiDS/VIKING area, where deep near-infrared data are also available. Conclusions. This paper accompanies the eROSITA early data release of all the observations performed during the performance and verification phase. Together with the catalogues of primary and secondary counterparts to the main and hard samples of the eFEDS survey, this paper releases their multi-wavelength properties and redshifts.