Résumé / Abstract Seminaire_IAP
« The surprising diversity of stellar explosions »

Stephen Smartt
Queen's University Belfast (Belfast, Irlande)

The last few years have seen a major change in searches for extragalactic optical transients. Wide-field survey telescopes with cameras covering 10 square degrees are now established and linked to rapid follow-up programmes. The standard picture of supernovae being either thermonuclear (type Ia) and core-collapse (mostly type II) is now being challenged. We detect transients that are much more luminous, and some which are much fainter, than previously known. There are fast transients, and some for which we do no even know if a thermonuclear or core-collapse origin is the physical mechanism. I will review these surprising discoveries, with an emphasis on recent results from PESSTO - the currently running public survey at ESO.
mercredi 17 juin 2015 - 11:00
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Page web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage