Colloq Abstract - Jencson
November 2, 2018
11:00am Mountain
Jacob Jencson (Caltech)
Hunting for Hidden Supernovae with SPIRITS
Abstract
The census of nearby core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) and other energetic massive star outbursts is incomplete, even in the local 40 Mpc volume. Despite enormous progress enabled by wide-field transient surveys, mostly in the optical, many such events are missed due to dust obscuration. Searches at longer wavelengths offer an ideal platform to discover these missing stellar explosions. I will present results from 5 years of SPIRITS, the Spitzer Infrared Intensive Transients Survey, an ongoing search of nearby galaxies for transients in the Spitzer/IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 micron imaging bands. We have now discovered a sample of 9 luminous infrared transients, of which 5 are likely heavily dust-extinguished CCSNe based on detailed, multi-wavelength characterizations. In particular, a dedicated radio follow-up effort with the VLA has confirmed multiple events and provides stringent constraints on their circumstellar environments. We find that as many as 38% of CCSNe are being missed in nearby galaxies due to extinction. The remaining events in our sample span diverse classifications including a stellar merger, weak or electron-capture supernovae, and self-obscuring outbursts of massive evolved stars. A broad array of eruptive and explosive stellar phenomena are waiting to be uncovered by new and upcoming infrared transient searches.
