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Tools for Supernovae: Discovery and Follow Up

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Tools for Supernovae: Discovery and Follow Up Tools for ssupernovae: DDiscovery and follow uup Tom Boles The 2005 Presidential Address, delivered on 2005 October 26 at the Geological Society, Burlington House, London W1 Have you ever wondered what motivates is the most important; it is here that most someone to search for supernovae? suspects are rejected. I will take each of There is the thrill of discovery of course, these in order. but if this were all, you would tire of it very quickly. It takes between three and four thousand patrols to discover one supernova, so it could be very disheart- Finding supernovae − ening. To put it another way, between one hundred and two hundred hours’ the first patrols work are needed between each discov- ery report, not to mention the extra hours It would be wrong not to consider who that the vagaries of our maritime climate started the first supernova patrol. The add to that total. I wonder what other first systematic search for supernovae branch of observing there can be where, was undertaken by Fritz Zwicky (1898− even with a GoTo system, it takes 110 1974). In total Zwicky (Figure 1) discov- hours to find what you’re looking for. ered a total of 123 supernovae between Seriously, there has to be something else 1921 and 1973. In fact it was he who first motivating the observer. introduced the name supernova to de- Unless the patrol itself is fun it would Figure 1. Fritz Zwicky. Fritz Zwicky Stiftung. scribe these most energetic of explo- seem like very hard work. Patrolling lets you look at a myriad sions. It was also Zwicky along with Walter Baade who first of magnificent galaxies, many of which are recognisable, not proposed, in 1934, the existence of neutron stars. This was by their names or numbers, but by the wonderful patterns not long after the neutron itself had been identified. Before that they display on the computer screen. Zwicky, only 12 extragalactic supernovae had previously I am often asked when I visit local societies, ‘What did it been discovered.1 feel like to make your first discovery?’ You might well be able Being based mainly at Mount Palomar, I doubt very much if to imagine that feeling, the first time you spot an interloper in Zwicky would have experienced the frustrations of the climate a distant galaxy... a new object newly visible... something a so familiar to patrollers in the UK, but I do suspect secretly few hundred million light years away... and you are the only that this famous picture of Zwicky (Figure 2) might have been person on Earth and maybe in the galaxy who knows that it is his feeling after 14 cloudy nights there. You pause for a few minutes’ deliberation enjoying this on Mount Wilson. unique privilege... then you start to record your observation... Zwicky’s work, searching for Well, I can tell you, it’s nothing like that! The first reaction SNe, was pioneering at that time. is panic: I’ve been looking for this for months; what do I do Although he used the 18" now? How do I know that it is real? What if I’m making a (45cm) Schmidt and eventually mistake? Somewhere perhaps a two metre telescope might the 48" (122cm) Schmidt tel- be requisitioned to take a spectrum and prove its type − its escopes on Mounts Wilson and very authenticity. If it’s false, good telescope time would be Palomar for his patrols, we also wasted and valuable observing time, long awaited and fought need to remember that he was over by a young professional astronomer, could be lost. using conventional chemical There are many obstacles in the way if a patroller wants to films. Some of these were quite be as confident as possible before reporting a discovery. I primitive in the earlier days. This will introduce these and show how to overcome them. In helps level the playing field Figure 2. Another image of Zwicky. Floyd Clark/Caltech. doing this I will also attempt to demonstrate some different when modern methods are con- things that motivate me and help to keep me enthusiastic sidered. Although he enjoyed quality skies and telescopes about looking for supernovae. with high light grasp and wide fields, he did not have the The process of supernova discovery involves three, not benefit of CCD cameras which as well as their increased sen- so simple, stages. First you find them, then you check and test sitivity can produce near instantaneous images without them and finally you report them. The second of these stages chemical processing. Reprinted from the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 229 Vol. 116 no. 5, pp. 229-238 (2006) www.britastro.org/journal/ Boles: Tools for supernovae numbers, is the automatic supernova detection software that it uses to ana- lyse the large number of images that are acquired each night. This is proprietary software which they received grants to develop and is for their own in-house use only. Both Filippenko and Li are ex- tremely helpful and cooperative in as- sisting the UK team to confirm or dis- prove supernova candidates. The Puckett team3 Tim Puckett runs a telescope manufac- turing business in the US. He has de- signed and manufactured the telescopes Figure 3. UK supernova that he uses for his patrol, which are patrollers. Top left: Mark Armstrong; top right: Tom based in some of the better parts of the Boles; bottom: Ron Arbour. US weather-wise. Tim uses a system of Some contemporary patrollers The UK team Figure 3 shows our team of regular pa- trollers here in the UK. It is made up of Boles, Armstrong and Arbour: the names are listed in this order as they are sometimes jokingly referred to as ‘BAA.’ To date, in spite of the British weather and other problems their discovery tally is fast approaching 200. Mark Armstrong and myself both use similar Celestron 14" (35cm) Schmidt−Cassegrain tel- escopes (SCT) on Paramount German Equatorial mountings. Our choice of CCD camera differs but we use identical Figure 13. Using the Inter-Planetary Network to make a possible identification of a supernova software to control the robotic patrol- with a GRB (see page 236). NASA. ling and image acquisition. Ron Arbour is currently using a 30cm equatorially mounted Meade SCT with Starlight Xpress cameras and home-written software. The picture of Ron shows him with his home-built 60cm reflector which he is developing for future patrols. Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS) team2 The most productive team by far worldwide is the Lick Ob- servatory Supernova Search (LOSS). This is a team of pro- fessional astronomers and undergraduates at Berkeley headed overall by Alex Filippenko. Weidong Li is in charge of the night time operational group. The Lick team discovers Figure 17. SNAP: between 60 and 85 SNe per year. The search is conducted on the SuperNova Acceleration the 76cm Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) Probe. Lawrence using integration times of 30 seconds on a back-illuminated Berkeley National thinned CCD camera. The strength of this team, besides its Laboratory. 230 J. Br. Astron. Assoc. 116, 5, 2006 Boles: Tools for supernovae farming out patrol images to approximately 30 members of − take as many galaxy images as possible when sky condi- his search team who analyse them and report potential dis- tions allow coveries back to him. At the time of delivering this talk Tim − get to as faint a magnitude as possible using an economic had recently broken the 100 barrier, and is now fast approach- integration time ing his 200th discovery. − get the target galaxy at least somewhere on the CCD chip without manual intervention and do it consistently. Michael Schwartz (Tenagra)4 Given that these are the three prime objectives for image acquisition then the system we use must be quick, sensitive Michael retired from running his own software company and and accurate. Accuracy can be achieved by investing in a has spent most of his time doing a vast range of astronomi- high quality mount. The mount needs to be accurate me- cal work. From his Tenagra Observatories he does patrol for chanically and also be able to make use of suitable software SNe but they are not his only area of interest. Part of his for reliable pointing. The best mounts in the world, including concept is the hire of internet-controlled telescopes to any- the large professional mounts, all suffer from some form of one requiring a remote robotic system. He has purchased mechanical flexure and misalignment. The software should and distributed systems similar to those used by Mark Arm- therefore also incorporate the ability to correct any mechani- strong and myself to places as far away as Australia. Michael cal inadequacy in the mount. means business; his medium term plans are for seven tel- Sensitivity and speed come from a combination of several escopes in the southern hemisphere. Recently Paul Lucas in factors. Firstly, the pixel size in the CCD camera increases its Perth, Western Australia reported his first discovery with a sensitivity; the larger the pixels, generally the more sensitive C14 and Paramount combination, and using Tenagra’s Nor- is the camera. I say generally because the signal to noise wegian telescope Odd Trondal has been reporting impres- ratio must also be kept under control. This problem increases sive results for some time. with increasing pixel size. Another area important to sensi- tivity is the tracking performance of the mount. Poor track- ing results in the image of any star being spread over a Other prominent amateurs number of pixels.
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