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