Turns out I'm becoming a supernova buff!Specifically, as I'm sure many of you know there are two main types- the kind that happens when a star explodes (Type II), but then there's also the kind where material from a companion falls onto a white dwarf and thermonuclear fusion kicks in (Type 1a). The exact model of how the latter happens isn't terribly clear, and one great way to figure it out would be to detect radio radiation from around a Type 1a supernova- we know it exists like 100 years after the supernova as we've detected it from one in the Milky Way, but as of now the only studies have been a few years post explosion and no one's detected anything at that short time scale. Which isn't super surprising- radio radiation in this case is basically from a shockwave plowing through gas around the supernova, which makes electrons spiral in the magnetic fields, and unlike massive stars which undergo a lot of mass loss in their final years this isn't an environment where you'd get a ton of that going on. But some eventually should, of course- you don't get a white dwarf without a planetary nebula, right?
Anyway, the second brightest supernova of the 20th century after SN 1987A was SN 1972E, which was a Type 1a 8.5 magnitude and in a dwarf galaxy, NGC 5253, about 12 million light years away (so, 6x further than Andromeda- pretty local!). Some people looked for radio radiation in like the 80s, but nothing was detected then, and it turns out there's some JVLA data in the area around this galaxy already. So, we're gonna see what we see!
Even if we don't see anything, we could definitely do some models to figure out what's going on, but if we do see something that would be pretty exciting!Even more fun, yesterday was my "start reading random papers" day when you start easing into a new project, and I discovered there was actually a second Type 1A supernova in this galaxy fairly recently astronomically, SN 1895B. So we get two supernovae in the field for the price of one! A fun coincidence.
Final fun thing, I'm going to be working primarily with someone new on this project, a postdoc who will be faculty in September who's definitely a rising star in the field- she was on the team that found the optical counterpart for the neutron star merger a few months back. So, that's awesome.
