Presentation Abstract

Presentation Number 337.29
Presentation Time: Wednesday, Jan 12, 2011, 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM
Title The First Year of the Palomar Transient Factory Type Ia Supernova Program
Author Block Peter E. Nugent1, D. A. Howell2, M. Sullivan3
1Lawrence Berkeley Lab., 2LCOGT/UCSB, 3University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
Abstract The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is an astronomical wide-field survey designed to search for optical transient and variable sources. PTF began on-sky operations in early 2009. It is fully-automated, including a wide-field survey camera, an automated real-time data reduction pipeline and transient classifier, a dedicated photometric follow up telescope, and a full archive of all detected sources. One of the PTF Key Projects is focused on Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia). The core science goals of this program are the creation of a new SN Ia optical and near-IR Hubble diagram with z < 0.1, a measurement of both volumetric and host-galaxy dependent SN Ia rates, and a determination of the dependence of SN Ia properties on their host properties and local environments. The result of these efforts should lead to improvements in both our understanding of the physics of these events and their utility as cosmological probes. During the first year of operation, PTF has discovered and spectroscopically classified over 500 SNe Ia. Here we present some early results from this survey, including UV studies of SNe Ia carried out on the Hubble Space Telescope, the host properties of the PTF SNe Ia, and an analysis of some of the youngest SN Ia spectra taken to date.