SNLS : SuperNova Legacy Survey

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.

Jun 02, 2009

New findings on the explosion rate of massive stars: is the Universe burning out?

A research team has just published the most precise measurement ever of the rate of gravitational collapse supernovae observed in the Universe 3.7 billion years ago

The Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) team at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope facility has just obtained the world's best measurement of the explosion rate of massive stars when the Universe was only 10 billion years old. A research team at IRFU's particle physics department at the CEA-Saclay centre worked on the first three years of SNLS data to obtain this result, which makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the origins and evolution of chemical elements in the interstellar medium.

New findings on the explosion rate of massive stars: is the Universe burning out?

Division of Electronics, Detectors and Computing for Physics (DEDIP)

Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe