THE LOCAL HOSTS OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE

Journal Article · Sun Dec 20 00:00:00 EST 2009 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/707/2/1449· OSTI ID:21392561

Neill, James D; Martin, D Christopher; Barlow, Tom A; Foster, Karl; Friedman, Peter G; Morrissey, Patrick; Wyder, Ted K ^[1]; Sullivan, Mark ^[2]; Howell, D Andrew ^[3]; Conley, Alex ^[4]; Seibert, Mark; Madore, Barry F ^[5]; Neff, Susan G ^[6]; Schiminovich, David ^[7]; Bianchi, Luciana ^[8]; Donas, Jose; Milliard, Bruno ^[9]; Heckman, Timothy M ^[10]; Lee, Young-Wook ^[11]; Rich, R Michael ^[12]

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1. California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
2. University of Oxford, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH (United Kingdom)
3. Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, 6740 Cortona Dr., Suite 102, Goleta, CA 93117 (United States)
4. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George Street, Toronto, ONM5S3H8 (Canada)
5. The Observatories of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA, 91101 (United States)
6. Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
7. Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 (United States)
8. Center for Astrophysical Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
9. Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, BP 8, Traverse du Siphon, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12 (France)
10. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
11. Center for Space Astrophysics, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749 (Korea, Republic of)
12. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (United States)

We use multi-wavelength, matched aperture, integrated photometry from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the RC3 to estimate the physical properties of 166 nearby galaxies hosting 168 well-observed Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). The ultraviolet (UV) imaging of local SN Ia hosts from GALEX allows a direct comparison with higher-redshift hosts measured at optical wavelengths that correspond to the rest-frame UV. Our data corroborate well-known features that have been seen in other SN Ia samples. Specifically, hosts with active star formation produce brighter and slower SNe Ia on average, and hosts with luminosity-weighted ages older than 1 Gyr produce on average more faint, fast, and fewer bright, slow SNe Ia than younger hosts. New results include that in our sample, the faintest and fastest SNe Ia occur only in galaxies exceeding a stellar mass threshold of approx10{sup 10} M{sub sun}, leading us to conclude that their progenitors must arise in populations that are older and/or more metal rich than the general SN Ia population. A low host extinction subsample hints at a residual trend in peak luminosity with host age, after correcting for light-curve shape, giving the appearance that older hosts produce less-extincted SNe Ia on average. This has implications for cosmological fitting of SNe Ia, and suggests that host age could be useful as a parameter in the fitting. Converting host mass to metallicity and computing {sup 56}Ni mass from the supernova light curves, we find that our local sample is consistent with a model that predicts a shallow trend between stellar metallicity and the {sup 56}Ni mass that powers the explosion, but we cannot rule out the absence of a trend. We measure a correlation between {sup 56}Ni mass and host age in the local universe that is shallower and not as significant as that seen at higher redshifts. The details of the age-{sup 56}Ni mass correlations at low and higher redshift imply a luminosity-weighted age threshold of approx3 Gyr for SN Ia hosts, above which they are less likely to produce SNe Ia with {sup 56}Ni masses above approx0.5 M{sub sun}.

• OSTI ID: 21392561
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 707, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/707/2/1449; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
APERTURES
EXPLOSIONS
GALACTIC EVOLUTION
GALAXIES
LUMINOSITY
MASS
METALS
NICKEL 56
PHOTOMETRY
RED SHIFT
SUPERNOVAE
ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
UNIVERSE
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-PLUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BINARY STARS
DAYS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ELECTRON CAPTURE RADIOISOTOPES
ELEMENTS
ERUPTIVE VARIABLE STARS
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
EVOLUTION
INTERMEDIATE MASS NUCLEI
ISOTOPES
NICKEL ISOTOPES
NUCLEI
OPENINGS
OPTICAL PROPERTIES
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATIONS
RADIOISOTOPES
STARS
VARIABLE STARS