Prompt Discovery and Investigation of Nearby Supernovae

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will support the continuation of a project to detect and characterize supernovae, the final, explosive stage in the evolution of certain types of stars. The principal goal of the project is to improve the understanding of the progenitor stars, explosion mechanisms, nucleosynthetic products, and cosmological utility of different types of supernovae. This work will have three parts: (a) the continuation robotic searches for supernovae, extending a recently implemented technique of discovering supernovae very shortly after the explosion; (b) the acquisition, reduction, analysis, and interpretation of extensive new data (photometry and spectroscopy, with particular emphasis on improving the utility of supernovae; (c) the analysis of new and existing data concerning pre-supernovae outbursts and the nature of stripped-envelope core-collapse supernovae; and (d) the analysis of new and existing polarimetry data on supernovae. The award will contribute to the training of undergraduate and graduate students and will support communication of the results of this project (and of supernovae in general) to the general public. The results are also expected to have broad implications for topics as diverse as the chemical evolution of galaxies, the birth rate of pulsars, the masses of black holes, the nature of gamma-ray bursts, and the expansion of the Universe.