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Subaru Telescope discovers most distant and ancient supernovae samples
An international team of scientists has assembled the largest sample ever found of the most distant and ancient supernovae, thanks to the Subaru Telescope.
Supernovae are exploding stars, which emitted their light about ten billion years ago, long before the Earth was formed.
Supernovae have substantial importance in astrophysics. By tracking the frequency and types of supernova explosions back through cosmic time, astronomers can reconstruct the universe’s history of element creation.
However, looking back in time requires looking out to great distances, which means that even these bright explosions are exceedingly faint and difficult to spot.
To overcome this obstacle, the team took advantage of a combination of Subaru Telescope’s assets: the huge light-collecting power of its large 8.2 meter primary mirror; the sharpness of its image; and the wide field of view of its prime focus camera (Suprime-Cam).
On four separate occasions, they pointed the telescope toward one single field called the Subaru Deep Field, which spans an area of the sky similar to that covered by the full Moon.
By “staring” at this single field, they let the faint light from the most distant galaxies and supernovae accumulate over several nights at a time, thus forming a very deep and long exposure of the field.
Each of the four observations caught about 40 supernovae in the act of exploding among the 150,000 galaxies in this field.
Altogether, the team discovered 150 explosions, including a dozen that rank among the most distant and ancient ever seen.
The team believe future observations with the next-generation Subaru imaging camera, Hyper Suprime-Cam, will permit the discovery of even larger and more distant supernova samples, and allow for further testing of this conclusion.
The results are described in the October 2011 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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