THE OXYGEN MASS IN SN-1987A - MAKING USE OF FLUCTUATIONS IN THE [O I] LAMBDA-LAMBDA-6300, 6364 PROFILE

The ''sawtooth'' structure in the profile of the forbidden oxygen doublet [O I] lambdalambda6300, 6364 of SN 1987A is identified with the statistical fluctuations of the oxygen cloud number. A model of spherical clouds homogeneously distributed in the spherical volume upsilon < 1700 km s-1 is assumed to describe the fluctuations. The observed mean square fluctuation can be reproduced if the number of clouds with characteristic velocity radius 60 km s-1 is almost-equal-to 2 x 10(3) and the corresponding filling factor of the oxygen material f is almost-equal-to 0.1. The combination of this filling factor with the ratio M(O) f-1 determined by the self-absorption effect results in the distance-independent estimate of the mass of clumpy oxygen in SN 1987A, M(O) almost-equal-to 1.2-1.5 M..