Direct identification of the progenitors of supernovae ( SNe ) is rare because of the required spatial resolution and depth of the archival data prior to the SN explosions .
Here we report on the identification of the progenitors of two nearby SNe in the Virgo cluster : SN 2006my in NGC 4651 and SN 2006ov in M61 .
We obtained high-quality ground-based images of SN 2006my with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope , and are able to locate the site of the SN on pre-SN Hubble Space Telescope ( HST ) Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images to a high precision ( 1 \sigma uncertainty of \pm 0 \hbox { $ . ^ { \prime \prime } $ } 05 ) .
We pinpoint the site of SN 2006ov to within 0 . ^ { \prime \prime } 02 from HST Advanced Camera for Surveys images of the SN .
We detected a red supergiant progenitor for each SN within the error circles , with an inferred zero-age main-sequence mass ( M _ { ZAMS } ) of 10 ^ { +5 } _ { -3 } M _ { \odot } and 15 ^ { +5 } _ { -3 } M _ { \odot } for the progenitors of SNe 2006my and 2006ov , respectively .
The mass estimates for the progenitors of both SNe confirm a suggested trend that the most common Type II-plateau SNe originate from low-mass supergiants with M _ { ZAMS } \approx 8 –20 M _ { \odot } .