Supernovae Type Ia
About Supernovae Type Ia (SN Ia)
Supernovae Ia are created when a white dwarf's mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun. This results in a runaway nuclear explosion, in which the white dwarf is destroyed. These appear observationally as new sources in the sky ("astronomical transients"), brighten for 10-20 days, and fade over a period of weeks to months. Since observing these objects requires relatively quick initial follow-ups, combined with repeated monitoring over a long period of time, the instrumentation we have available to us is well-suited to observing these objects.
Observing Campaign 2023
Although we have building our experience on these sources for several years, in 2023 we kicked off a larger scale campaign to systematically gather data on the early light curves of SN Ia. We used the Transient Name Server (daily digest) to select sources that were a) bright, b) visible in Aladin preview images (shown below), c) clearly associated with a galaxy, d) reasonably well-separated from the core of that galaxy, and e) observable with appropriate instrumentation on the iTelescope network. We will be publishing a more complete analysis of these sources, but here we present a selection.
SN2023cyx
in B and I filters, from the 0.51-m T11 telescope, 15 min in each image. In this case, there was likely some source confusion between the galaxy and the supernovae.
Light curve data can be found here - raw data available upon request.
SN2023hrn
In the galaxy NGC3535. These R and B filter images were the 0.508-m T30 telescope, and are 15 minutes each.
Light curve data can be found here - raw data available upon request.
Unobserved "failed" Sources
Since we are targeting the early light curves of SN Ia, and we don't have access to a large telescope and spectrometer, we had to begin observing sources before they were positively identified as SN Ia - before they were even positively identified as SN, instead of just blips in the data from ZTF and Gaia. Here is a list of those sources which we observed a small number of times, but could not identify them as clear transients, and won't be doing any followup observations of:
SN2023cju SN2023ctf AT2023dec AT2023eny AT2023gbs SN2023jto AT2023kjs AT2023lyt AT2023npw AT2023oxv AT2023see
Note that since TNS does not change the name from "AT" to "SN" until someone positively identifies the source, the fact that these are mostly AT means no one else has followed up on them either. Also note that we actually have follow-up observations on a couple of these, to implement a template subtraction procedure and maybe isolate the target. The list of targets which we have some reasonable data for follows.
