11/14/13 Robert Quimby SO/NOAO Joint Colloquium Series
Dr. Robert Quimby, CalTech
"Unusually Bright Supernovae"
Abstract
A small fraction of supernovae appear much brighter--for a given distance--than typical events. Included among these are so called "superluminous supernovae" (SLSNe), which have intrinsically high luminosities, but some other supernovae with normal luminosities may simply appear brighter due to physical processes external to the supernova. In this talk, I will first introduce SLSNe and describe my recent work measuring the distributions and rates of these objects. I will then discuss a recently discovered supernova, PS1-10afx, which appears as bright or even brighter than SLSNe given its redshift (z ~ 1.4), but which cannot be explained by any SLSN model. I will show that PS1-10afx is not intrinsically luminous; rather, it is the first discovery of a supernova strongly magnified by a foreground object.
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