The largest catalog of exploding stars is now available

March 16 () –

The largest publication of relatively close supernovae data with three years of observing the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii it is already available through the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE).

The project, which started in 2019, it surveyed more than 1,500 square degrees of the sky every three days and discovered thousands of new cosmic explosions and other astrophysical transients, dozens of them just days or hours after the explosion.

The recently published data contain information about nearly 2,000 supernovae and other luminous variable objects with observations in multiple colors. He is also the first to widely use multicolor images to classify supernovae and estimate their distances.

Astrophysicists use large imaging surveys (systematic studies of large areas of the sky over time) and different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum for many scientific purposes. Some are used to study distant galaxies and how they evolve over cosmic time, or to look at specific regions of the sky that are especially important, like the Andromeda galaxy.

“Pan-STARRS produces a steady stream of transient discoveries, observing large areas of the sky every clear night with two telescopes,” he said. it’s a statement Mark Huber, IfA Principal Investigator. “With over a decade of observations, Pan-STARRS operates one of the best calibrated systems in astronomy, with a detailed reference image of the static sky visible from Haleakala. This allows for rapid discovery and tracking of supernovae and other transient events, very suitable for programs like YSE to build the sample required for analysis and this important data release.”

YSE is designed to find energetic astrophysical “transient” sources, such as supernovae, tidal disruption events, and kilonovae (extremely energetic explosions). These transients evolve rapidly, reaching its maximum brightness and then fading after a few days or months.

Pan-STARRS images are transferred to the UH Information Technology Center for initial processing and scientific calibration by the Pan-STARRS Image Processing Pipeline. High-level processing, detailed analysis, and storage were performed using computer systems at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Center for Astrophysical Surveys (CAPS), the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC), and Dark Cosmology. Center (DARK) at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

The survey and the tools used to analyze the data are critical precursors to the upcoming legacy survey of space and time from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new 8.4-meter telescope being built in Chile. The Rubin Observatory will survey the entire sky every three nights and will discover so many variable and explosive objects that detailed follow-up observations will be impossible. The ability to classify these objects from the survey data alone it will be vital in choosing the most interesting ones for astronomers to point at with other telescopes.