Real-time Detection and Rapid Multiwavelength Follow-up Observations of a Highly Subluminous Type II-P Supernova from the Palomar Transient Factory Survey

Creators: Gal-Yam, Avishay; Kasliwal, Mansi M.; Quimby, Robert M.; Kulkarni, Shrinivas R.; Ofek, Eran O.; Walters, Richard

Abstract

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is an optical wide-field variability survey carried out using a camera with a 7.8 deg^2 field of view mounted on the 48 inch Oschin Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory. One of the key goals of this survey is to conduct high-cadence monitoring of the sky in order to detect optical transient sources shortly after they occur. Here, we describe the real-time capabilities of the PTF and our related rapid multiwavelength follow-up programs, extending from the radio to the γ-ray bands. We present as a case study observations of the optical transient PTF10vdl (SN 2010id), revealed to be a very young core-collapse (Type II-P) supernova having a remarkably low luminosity. Our results demonstrate that the PTF now provides for optical transients the real-time discovery and rapid-response follow-up capabilities previously reserved only for high-energy transients like gamma-ray bursts.

Additional Information

© 2011 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2011 January 23; accepted 2011 May 15; published 2011 July 19. This paper is dedicated to the memory of our dear colleague, J. Jacobsen, who contributed significantly to the success of this project. The Palomar Transient Factory project is a scientific collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Las Cumbres Observatory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Weizmann Institute participation in PTF is supported in part by grants from the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) to A.G.-Y. Joint Weizmann-Caltech activity is supported by a grant from the Binational Science Foundation to A.G.-Y. and S.R.K. Support for Weizmann-UK collaborative work is provided by a Weizmann-UK "making connections" grant to A.G.-Y. and M.S. Joint activity by A.G.-Y. and P.A.M. is supported by a Weizmann-MINERVA grant. A.G.-Y. further acknowledges support from an EU/FP7 Marie Curie IRG Fellowship. E.O.O. and D.P. are grateful to NASA for Einstein Fellowships. The work of A.V.F.'s group at UC Berkeley is funded by US National Science Foundation (NSF) grant AST-0908886, the TABASGO Foundation, Gary and Cynthia Bengier, and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. LAIWO, a wide-angle camera operating on the 1m telescope at the Wise Observatory, Israel, was built at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, with financial support from the MPIA, grants from the German Israeli Science Foundation for Research and Development, and the ISF. KAIT and its ongoing operation were made possible by donations from Sun Microsystems, Inc., the Hewlett-Packard Company, AutoScope Corporation, Lick Observatory, the NSF, the University of California, the Sylvia & Jim Katzman Foundation, and the TABASGO Foundation. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, provided staff, computational resources, and data storage for this project. P.E.N. acknowledges support from the U.S. Department of Energy Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program under contract DE-FG02-06ER06-04. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; the observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank the staffs of the many observatories at which data were obtained for their excellent assistance. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA.

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