Spectroscopic Confirmation of DES13S2cmm: The first DES Superluminous Supernova
ATel #5603; A. Papadopoulos (University of Portsmouth); M. Sullivan (University of Southampton); C. D'Andrea, R. Nichol (University of Portsmouth); K. Maguire (ESO); R. Kessler (University of Chicago); R. A. Covarrubias (University of Illinois / NCSA); R. Cane, J. A. Fischer, L. Gladney, M. March, M. Sako (University of Pennsylvania); P. J. Brown, K. Krisciunas, N. Suntzeff (Texas A&M University); R. Maartens, M. Smith (University of the Western Cape); K. Barbary, J. P. Bernstein, R. Biswas, R. Gupta, E. Kovacs, S. Kuhlmann, H. Spinka (Argonne National Laboratory); E. Ahn, D. Finley, J. Frieman, J. Marriner, W. Wester (Fermilab); G. Aldering, J. S. Bloom, D. Goldstein, A. Kim, P. Nugent, S. Perlmutter, R. C. Thomas (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory); R. J. Foley (University of Illinois); S. Desai, K. Paech (Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich); R. C. Smith (NOAO/CTIO); M. Schubnell (University of Michigan)
on 26 Nov 2013; 19:56 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Mark Sullivan (m.sullivan@soton.ac.uk)
Subjects: Optical, Supernovae
We report optical spectroscopy of a supernova (SN) candidate discovered by the Dark Energy Survey (ATel #4668). The spectrum (595-940 nm) of DES13S2cmm was obtained using the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) under a Director's Discretionary Time proposal. A comparison of the spectrum reveals this event to be spectroscopically similar to PTF09atu (Quimby et al. 2011, Nature 474, 7352), a superluminous supernova type-I (SLSN-I). The redshift is measured by emission lines (OII, OIII, Hbeta) from the faint (m(r)~23.5) host galaxy at z=0.663. At this redshift, the object formally falls below the absolute magnitude limit (-21) for a SLSN (Gal-Yam 2012, Science 337, 937) and peaks at M(U)~-20.9. The phase at the date of the spectrum given below is based on the DES light curves.
Name | RA(J2000) | Dec(J2000) | Discovery | Discovery | Spectrum | redshift | type | phase
| | | date (UT) | i mag | date (UT) | | |
DES13S2cmm | 02:42:32.83 | -01:21:30.1 | 2013 Sep 02 | 22.59 | 2013 Nov 20 | 0.663 | SLSN-I | few weeks past peak brightness
