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Published December 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

PTF10ops – a subluminous, normal-width light curve Type Ia supernova in the middle of nowhere

Abstract

PTF10ops is a Type Ia supernova (SN Ia), whose light curve and spectral properties place it outside the current SN Ia subtype classifications. Its spectra display the characteristic lines of subluminous SNe Ia, but it has a normal-width light curve with a long rise time, typical of normal-luminosity SNe Ia. The early-time optical spectra of PTF10ops were modelled using a spectral fitting code and found to have all the lines typically seen in subluminous SNe Ia, without the need to invoke more uncommon elements. The host galaxy environment of PTF10ops is also unusual with no galaxy detected at the position of the SN down to an absolute limiting magnitude of r≥−12.0 mag, but a very massive galaxy is present at a separation of ∼148 kpc and at the same redshift as suggested by the SN spectral features. The progenitor of PTF10ops is most likely a very old star, possibly in a low-metallicity environment, which affects its explosion mechanism and observational characteristics. PTF10ops does not easily fit into any of the current models of either subluminous or normal SN Ia progenitor channels.

Additional Information

© 2011 The Authors. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS. Accepted 2011 July 27. Received 2011 July 27; in original form 2011 July 13. Article first published online: 26 Sep. 2011. MS acknowledges support from the Royal Society. AG-Y and MS acknowledge support from theWeizmann-UK 'making connection' programme. The Weizmann Institute–PTF partnership is funded in part by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) via a grant to AG-Y. The joint WIS–Caltech activity is funded by a Binational Science Foundation (BSF) grant to AG-Y and SRK. AG-Y further acknowledges support from the EU/FP7 via a Marie Curie IRG fellowship and an ARCHES prize from the German BMBF. This work was supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. EOO is supported by NASA grants. EOO and DP are both supported by Einstein fellowships. SBC acknowledges generous financial assistance from Gary & Cynthia Bengier, the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, NASA/Swift grants NNX10AI21G and GO- 7100028, the TABASGOFoundation, andNSF grantAST-0908886. This publication has been made possible by the participation of more than 10 000 volunteers in the Galaxy Zoo Supernovae project, http://supernova.galaxyzoo.org/authors. The WHT is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de losMuchachos of the Instituto de Astrof´ısica de Canarias. The Liverpool Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. Observations were obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Palomar Transient factory project, a scientific collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia Unversity, La Cumbres Observatory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Some of the data were obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These observations were made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. SNIFS on the UH2.2-m telescope is part of the Nearby Supernova Factory II project, a scientific collaboration among the Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon, Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et des Hautes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Yale University, University of Bonn, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Tsinghua Center for Astrophysics, and the Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille. Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, data were obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555." This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Data base (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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August 22, 2023
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