Discovery and classification of a young Type Ia supernova in UGC 8503
ATel #6175; Y. Cao, D. Perley (Caltech), M. Kasliwal (Carnegie), J. Johansson, A. Goobar (OKC), R. Quimby (IPMU) A. Horesh, I. Sagiv, Y. Ofer, E. Ofek, A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann) P. Nugent (LBL), D. Fox (PSU) on behalf of the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory collaboration
on 27 May 2014; 16:39 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Yi Cao (ycao@astro.caltech.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Supernovae
The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (Law et al. 2009; ATel#4807) reports
discovery of a young supernova, iPTF14bdn, at RA=13:30:44.88
and Dec=+32:45:42.4 (J2000) in UGC 8503 at z=0.01558. It was discovered
at r=19.1 mag on UT 2014 May 27.24. Nothing was found at the same
location down to r~21.4 mag on UT 2014 May 26.28 and in the PTF/iPTF
archive down to a similar depth.
We took a spectrum of this young supernova candidate with the
Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) mounted on the Keck I
telescope on UT 2014 May 27.40. The spectrum shows a Si II
6150 absorption feature relatively weaker than a normal Type Ia.
The minimum of the Si II absorption corresponds to a velocity of ~15,000 km/s.
No sign of strong extinction was seen in the spectrum. Hence,
the Si II feature in the spectrum and the absolute magnitude of -15 mag together suggest
that iPTF14bdn is probably a SN1991T/SN1999aa-like event at least two weeks before
maximum.
