Monday, November 13, 2006, 11:00 pm, Pratt Conference Room
>>> Note special day and time <<<
The Texas Supernova Search
Mr. Robert Quimby (U. Texas)
|
Supernovae (SNe) are popular tools to explore the cosmological
expansion of the Universe owing to their bright peak magnitudes and
reasonably high rates; however, even the relatively homogeneous Type
Ia supernovae are not perfect standard candles intrinsically. Their
absolute peak brightness must be established by corrections that have
been largely empirical. Hundreds of SNe are now found every year,
shrinking the statistical errors in the cosmological terms, but most
of these distant discoveries do little to further the physical
understanding of SNe, which may illuminate unknown systematics.
This talk will describe recent results from the The Texas Supernova Search, a campaign designed to discover not the most SNe nor the most distant SNe, but instead to amass a small collection of well-observed nearby SNe with detailed, multi-epoch spectral observations beginning at the earliest possible phases. For the past two years, we have pointed ROTSE-IIIb's 1.85 x 1.85 degree field of view at nearby galaxy clusters and searched thousands of galaxies, covering hundreds of square degrees on the sky, for supernovae. With ToO time on the neighboring 9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope, we have captured SNe spectra at some of the earliest phases ever. I will discuss the implications of these data on the physics of SNe explosions, including the propagation of the burning front and the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae. |