The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance, and First Results
- N. Law, S. Kulkarni, J. Zolkower
- Physics
- 30 June 2009
The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a fully-automated, wide-field survey aimed at a systematic exploration of the optical transient sky. The transient survey is performed using a new 8.1 square…
THE FIRST SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF TYPE Ibc SUPERNOVA MULTI-BAND LIGHT CURVES
- M. Drout, A. Soderberg, Y. Green
- Physics
- 22 November 2010
We present detailed optical photometry for 25 Type Ibc supernovae (SNe Ibc) within d ≈ 150 Mpc obtained with the robotic Palomar 60 inch telescope in 2004–2007. This study represents the first…
Hydrogen-poor superluminous stellar explosions
- R. Quimby, S. Kulkarni, D. Levitan
- PhysicsNature
- 1 October 2009
Observations of a class of luminous supernovae whose properties cannot be explained by any of the following processes: radioactive decay of freshly synthesized elements, explosion shock in the envelope of a supergiant star, and interaction between the debris and slowly moving, hydrogen-rich circumstellar material.
Relativistic ejecta from X-ray flash XRF 060218 and the rate of cosmic explosions
- A. Soderberg, S. Kulkarni, P. McCarthy
- PhysicsNature
- 18 April 2006
Radio and X-ray observations of XRF 060218 (associated with supernova SN 2006aj), the second-nearest GRB identified until now, are reported, showing that this event is a hundred times less energetic but ten times more common than cosmological GRBs.
Luminous Supernovae
- A. Gal-yam
- PhysicsScience
- 15 August 2012
High-resolution spectroscopy of the supernova PTF 11kx is reported, which was detected on 26 January 2011 by the Palomar Transient Factory survey, and the data suggest a red giant star companion whose material got transferred to the white dwarf.
An extremely luminous X-ray outburst at the birth of a supernova
- A. Soderberg, E. Berger, D. York
- PhysicsNature
- 13 February 2008
This work reports the serendipitous discovery of a supernova at the time of the explosion, marked by an extremely luminous X-ray outburst, and attributes the outburst to the ‘break-out’ of the supernova shock wave from the progenitor star, and shows that the inferred rate of such events agrees with that of all core-collapse supernovae.
Supernova SN 2011fe from an exploding carbon–oxygen white dwarf star
- P. Nugent, M. Sullivan, D. Poznanski
- PhysicsNature
- 27 October 2011
Early observations of type Ia supernova SN 2011fe in the galaxy M101 at a distance from Earth of 6.4 megaparsecs find that the exploding star was probably a carbon–oxygen white dwarf, and from the lack of an early shock it is concluded that the companion was likely a main-sequence star.
LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
- L. S. C. P. A. Abell, J. Allison, H. Zhan
- Physics
- 1 December 2009
A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic…
A kilonova as the electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational-wave source
- S. Smartt, T.-W. Chen, O. Yaron
- PhysicsNature
- 16 October 2017
Observations and physical modelling of a rapidly fading electromagnetic transient in the galaxy NGC 4993, which is spatially coincident with GW170817, indicate that neutron-star mergers produce gravitational waves and radioactively powered kilonovae, and are a nucleosynthetic source of the r-process elements.
The afterglow of GRB 050709 and the nature of the short-hard γ-ray bursts
The final chapter in the long-standing mystery of the γ-ray bursts (GRBs) centres on the origin of the short-hard class of bursts, which are suspected on theoretical grounds to result from the…
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