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SALT spectroscopic classification of PS15atx as a type-Ia supernova

ATel #7679; S. W. Jha (Rutgers), Y.-C. Pan, R. J. Foley (Illinois), A. Rest (STScI), D. Scolnic (Chicago/KICP), K. W. Smith, D. Wright, S. J. Smartt (QUB), M. Huber, K. C. Chambers, H. Flewelling, M. Willman, N. Primak, A. Schultz, B. Gibson, E. Magnier, C. Waters, J. Tonry, R. J. Wainscoat (IfA, Hawaii), E. Depagne (SALT)
on 21 Jun 2015; 04:03 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Saurabh Jha (saurabh@physics.rutgers.edu)

Subjects: Optical, Supernovae

We obtained SALT (+RSS) spectroscopy of PS15atx on 2015 June 20.8 UT, covering the wavelength range 400-950 nm. Cross-correlation of the spectrum with a template library using SNID (Blondin & Tonry 2007, ApJ, 666, 1024) shows PS15atx to be a normal type-Ia supernova a few days before maximum light. Lines from the host galaxy give a redshift z = 0.072. Adopting this redshift yields an expansion velocity for the Si II (reset 635.5 nm) feature of 15,000 km/s.

PS15atx was discovered as part of the Pan-STARRS Survey for Transients (Huber et al. 2015, ATel #7153). Information on all PSST objects is available at http://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/ps1threepi/.