Discovery two new supernovae in the Pan-STARRS1 3Pi faint galaxy supernova survey

ATel #2981; S. Valenti, E. Kankare, L. Magill, S. Mattila, S. Smartt, K. Smith, R. Kotak (Queen's University Belfast); A., F. Bresolin, R. Kudritzki, J. Tonry, E. Magnier, K. Chambers, N. Kaiser, J. Morgan, W. Burgett, J. Heasley, W. Sweeney, C. Waters, H. Flewelling (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii); P. A. Price (Princeton)
on 28 Oct 2010; 11:26 UT
Credential Certification: Stefano Valenti (s.valenti@qub.ac.uk)

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report the discovery of two supernovae in the Pan-STARRS 1 "3Pi Faint galaxy supernova survey". During the course of the PS1 3Pi sky survey, PS1-10ayu was detected on Aug 18.5 (UT) (Coord: 22:28:13.76 -08:04:35.49 J2000) at r=19.18 and detected again on Aug 19.4 (i=19.4) and Sep 14.5 (r=19.81) at 2 arcsec North-East from the SDSS galaxy J222813.65-080436.6 . PS1-10bik was detected on Aug 16.5 (UT) (Coord: 22:45:30.15 23:22:53.54 J2000) at g=17.57 and r=17.56 within 0.5 arcsec of the faint SDSS galaxy J224530.12+232253.9 . A noisy spectrum of PS1-10ayu was obtained at the Nordic Optical Telescope (+ALFOSC+Gr4 ; range 350-950nm) on Oct. 06.95 (UT) while a spectrum of PS1-10bik was obtained with the same instrument on Oct. 21.98 (UT). Cross-correlation of the observed spectra with a library of supernova spectra with the "GELATO" code (Harutyunyan et al. 2008, A.Ap. 488, 383, available at https://gelato.tng.iac.es/login.cgi) shows that both objects are SNe Ia. The spectrum of PS1-10ayu is similar to the spectrum of SN 1989B at 1 month after maximum at a redshift of z= 0.11 while the spectrum of PS1-10bik is similar to the spectrum of a type Ia SNe 2-3 months after maximum at a redshift of z= 0.05 . Using a distance modulus of 38.48 for PS1-10ayu its host galaxy SDSS magnitude corresponds to an absolute r magnitude of -17.8 . Using a distance modulus of 36.67 for PS1-10bik its host galaxy SDSS magnitude corresponds to an absolute r magnitude of -17.12 . This discovery was enabled using the PS1 System operated by the PS1 Science Consortium (PS1SC) and its member institutions, http://www.ps1sc.org/PS1_System_ATel.htm . We would like to thank the PS1 telescope operators for their support of PS1 observations.