Statistics
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21346908k&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #469.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.419
Statistics
Scientific paper
Motivated by the glaring absolute visual magnitude gap between novae and supernovae (-10 to -16), we discuss how the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) will systematically search for optical transients in the local universe (<200Mpc). The least explored regime in this gap, with several intriguing theoretical predictions, is short-duration transients (a few days). Novae can be found easily in nearby galaxies but statistics on brighter outliers is limited by the search volume. Supernovae searches are optimized to find supernovae and are either insensitive to (e.g. due to their long cadence), or actively reject transients fainter than typical supernovae. We undertook a careful census of all available distances to nearby galaxies. We used this catalog to select PTF fields with galaxy-light concentrations to maximize the odds of finding transients in the gap. We discuss why the chance coincidence of an unrelated foreground or background event on a galaxy in the local universe is extremely small. We think this search is timely in that it works towards a complete inventory of potential electromagnetic counterparts to discoveries by next-generation instruments (e.g., Advanced LIGO, Auger, ICECUBE) which are also limited in sensitivity to the local universe.
Kasliwal Mansi M.
Kulkarni Sandeep S.
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