Related papers: Probing the Type Ia environment with Light Echoes
Type Ia supernovae are bright stellar explosions thought to occur when a thermonuclear runaway consumes roughly a solar mass of degenerate stellar material. These events produce and disseminate iron-peak elements, and properties of their…
Type IIn supernovae occur when stellar explosions are surrounded by dense hydrogen-rich circumstellar matter. The dense circumstellar matter is likely formed by extreme mass loss from their progenitors shortly before they explode. The…
Light echoes occur when light from a luminous transient is scattered by dust back into our line of sight with a time delay due to the extra propagation distance. We introduce a novel approach to estimating the distance to a source by…
Analysis of the polarization of light from supernovae can reveal the shape and distribution of matter ejected from exploding stars. Here we review the young field of Type Ia supernova spectropolarimetry and critically evaluate, and place in…
One method of discriminating between the many Type Ia progenitor scenarios is by searching for contaminating hydrogen and helium stripped from the companion star. We present several high-resolution 2-D numerical simulations of the impact of…
Despite decades of dedicated efforts there are still basic questions to answer with regard to Supernova progenitor systems and explosion mechanisms. In particular, in the last years a number of exceptionally bright objects and extremely…
Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) are used as reliable cosmic distance indicators and their standardization is necessary for a more accurate measurement of the cosmological parameters of the Universe. However, the Hubble diagram still shows some…
We present constraints on supernovae type Ia (SNe~Ia) progenitors through an analysis of the environments found at the explosion sites of 102 events within star-forming host galaxies. H-alpha and GALEX near-UV images are used to trace…
We present an analytical model for light echoes (LEs) coming from circumstellar material (CSM) around Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia). Using this model we find two spectral signatures at 4100 {\AA} and 6200 {\AA} that are useful to identify LEs…
Light Echoes (LEs) are the reflections of astrophysical transients off of interstellar dust. They are fascinating astronomical phenomena that enable studies of the scattering dust as well as of the original transients. LEs, however, are…
An explanation is given of the low value of $R_\lambda \equiv A_\lambda/E(B-V) $, the ratio of absolute to selective extinction deduced from Type Ia supernova observations. The idea involves scattering by dust clouds located in the…
One promising method to test progenitor models for Type Ia supernovae is to identify surviving companion stars in historical supernova remnants. A surviving companion will have been strongly affected by its interaction with the supernova…
Light echoes offer a means of studying protoplanetary disks, including their geometry and composition, even when they are not spatially resolved. We present a test of this approach applied specifically to optically thick, geometrically…
Type Ia supernovae are bright stellar explosions distinguished by standardizable light curves that allow for their use as distance indicators for cosmological studies. Despite their highly successful use in this capacity, the progenitors of…
The nature of the progenitor system[s] of Type Ia Supernovae is still unclear. In this contribution I review the projects that have been undertaken to answer this question and the results they have led to. The conclusion is that, as of…
Type Ia Supernovae are in many aspects still enigmatic objects. Recent years have witnessed a bonanza of supernova observations. The increased samples from dedicated searches have allowed the statistical investigation of Type Ia Supernovae…
We discuss recent evidence for an accelerating Universe from measurements of type Ia supernovae at high redshift, and describe tests of various systematic effects such as extinction and evolution that could be biasing the cosmological…
The question of the nature of the progenitor of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is important both for our detailed understanding of stellar evolution and for their use as cosmological probes of the dark energy. Much of the basic features of SNe…
During the first several days after explosion, Type Ia supernova light curves probe the outer layers of the exploding star and therefore provide important clues for identifying their progenitors. We investigate how both the shallow…
Supernova (SN) light echoes could be a powerful tool for determining distances to galaxies geometrically, Sparks 1994. In this paper we present CCD photometry of the environments of 64 historical supernovae, the first results of a program…