Selecting superluminous supernovae in faint galaxies from the first year of the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey. (2015)
Keywords :
supernovae general - supernovae: individual: PS1-10pm - supernovae: individual: PS1-10ahf
Abstract:The Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) survey has obtained imaging in five bands (griz y_P1_) over 10 Medium Deep Survey (MDS) fields covering a total of 70 square degrees. This paper describes the search for apparently hostless supernovae (SNe) within the first year of PS1 MDS data with an aim of discovering superluminous supernovae (SLSNe). A total of 249 hostless transients were discovered down to a limiting magnitude of M_AB_~23.5, of which 76 were classified as Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). There were 57 SNe with complete light curves that are likely core-collapse SNe (CCSNe) or type Ic SLSNe and 12 of these have had spectra taken. Of these 12 hostless, non-Type Ia SNe, 7 were SLSNe of type Ic at redshifts between 0.5 and 1.4. This illustrates that the
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From the period starting February 25th 2010 and ending July 9th 2011,
249 hostless transients or "orphans" were discovered in the PS1 Medium
Deep fields. AN orphan is defined as an object that is >3.4" away from
the centre of a catalogued galaxy or point source brighter than
approximately 23.5m (in any of the g_P1_ r_P1_ i_P1_ filters that the
transient was detected in).
The PS1 observations are obtained through a set of five broadband
filters, which we have designated as g_P1_, r_P1_, i_P1_, z_P1_, and
y_P1_. Although the filter system for PS1 has much in common with that
used in previous surveys, such as SDSS (Abazajian et al.,
2009ApJS..182..543A), there are important differences. The gP1 filter
extends 20nm redward of g_SDSS_, paying the price of 5577{AA} emission
for greater sensitivity and lower systematics for photometric
redshifts, and the zP1 filter is cut off at 930nm, giving it a
different response than the detector response which defined z_SDSS_.
SDSS has no corresponding y_P1_ filter. Further information on the
passband shapes is described in Stubbs et al. (2010ApJS..191..376S).
The PS1 photometric system and its response is covered in detailed in
Tonry et al. (2012ApJ...750...99T, Cat. J/ApJ/750/99). Photometry is
in the "natural" PS1 system, m=-2.5log(flux)+m', with a single
zeropoint adjustment m' made in each band to conform to the AB
magnitude scale.
- J/ApJ/750/99 : The Pan-STARRS1 photometric system (Tonry+, 2012)
