We present our findings based on pre- and post-explosion data of the type II-Plateau SN 2018aoq that exploded in NGC 4151 .
As distance estimates to NGC 4151 vary by an order of magnitude , we utilised the well-known correlation between ejecta velocity and plateau brightness , i.e .
the standard candle method , to obtain a distance of 18.2 \pm 1.2 Mpc , which is in very good agreement with measurements based on geometric methods .
The above distance implies a mid-plateau absolute magnitude of M _ { V } ^ { 50 } = -15.76 \pm 0.14 suggesting that it is of intermediate brightness when compared to IIP SNe such as SN 2005cs at the faint end , and more typical events such as SN 1999em .
This is further supported by relatively low expansion velocities ( Fe ii \lambda 5169 \sim 3000 km s ^ { -1 } at +42 d ) .
Using archival HST /WFC3 imaging data , we find a point source coincident with the supernova position in the F350LP , F555W , F814W , and F160W filters .
This source shows no significant variability over the \sim 2 month time span of the data .
From fits to the spectral energy distribution of the candidate progenitor , we find \log \left ( L / L _ { \odot } \right ) \sim 4.7 and T _ { \mathrm { eff } } \sim 3.5 kK , implying an M-type red supergiant progenitor .
From comparisons to single and binary star models , we find that both favour the explosion of a star with a zero-age main sequence mass of \sim 10 M _ { \odot } .