Speaker
Prof.
Stephen Smartt
(Queen's University Belfast)
Description
The Pan-STARRS-1 telescope is a 1.8m survey facility with a 1.4 Gigapix camera, the
largest ever built for astronomical use. It has completed 1 year of full science
operations. It has mapped most of the northern sky in grizY, is finding near-earth
asteroids at fainter magnitudes than before and has discovered more than 2000
supernovae in the Medium Deep Survey fields. These are 11 fields of approximately 7
square degrees each, which are observed in grizY with an average frequency of 3 days.
The data provide multi-colour lightcurves and the ability to stack the images over
selected periods. I will highlight some new results from PS1, principally the study
of ultra-luminous supernovae from redshifts 0.5 - 1.4 and discuss the nature of this
population and their host galaxies. We have a focused search for transients with no
cataloged host galaxy, or stellar counterpart, and the results of the first year
(~250 objects) will be summarised.
Primary author
Prof.
Stephen Smartt
(Queen's University Belfast)
