Type Ia Supernovae with CFHT

Melissa Graham
UCSB/LCOGT



Abstract:

I will talk about my work on two surveys for Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Multi-Epoch NEArby Cluster Survey (MENeaCS) and the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). MENeaCS monitored 60 low redshift, x-ray luminous galaxy clusters with a monthly cadence for two years. We discovered 23 cluster SNe Ia, 4 of which are apparently hostless and likely belong to the population of intracluster stars. I will discuss how we used these SNe Ia to constrain the fraction of light in the intracluster medium, as presented in our first MENeaCS publication (Sand et al. 2011). I will also discuss our recent attempts to characterize star formation and metallicity in our sample of cluster hosts, our preliminary rates measurements, and highlight some additional MENeaCS science. The SNLS, also now completed, discovered ~500 SNe Ia between 0.2