Apr 19, 2010
The universe and the light from reddened candles
Supernovae will no longer escape from physicists!

The SNLS collaboration (Supernova Legacy Survey, at the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope) has just published a new method which allows the determination of the recession velocity of supernovae, those "standard candles" which have appeared in the universe throughout its history. The novelty of the method is its ability to study these cataclysmic explosions without needing to turn to spectroscopy, which requires too much observation time, even when using the planet's largest telescopes. The method relies solely on photometric data collected with the Megacam camera. Close to half of the thousand supernovae observed by the SNLS experiment since 2003 would have had to be abandoned without this new approach. For future projects, which are aiming at a million supernovae, this type of analysis will be absolutely crucial.

The methodology developed has just been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics 

 

 

Figure 1: The dome sheltering the 3.60 m diameter telescope at the Canada-France-Hawaii Observatory, situated on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

 

 

 

This result will appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics: "Photometric redshifts for supernovae Ia in the Supernova Legacy Survey", N. Palanque-Delabrouille, V. Ruhlmann-Kleider, S. Pascal, J. Rich et al.

 

For an electronic version go to: http://fr.arxiv.org/abs/0911.1629



IRFU contacts:

 

N. Palanque-Delabrouille

J. Rich

V. Ruhlmann-Kleider




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 
#2807 - Last update : 05/06 2010

 

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