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The First Stars and Galaxies: Challenges for the Next Decade Participants
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Talk
Title: The Hunt for the Most Luminous Supernovae Author(s): S. R. Kulkarni Abstract: The deaths of massive stars encompasses rich physics (e.g. pair instability), rich phenomenology (e.g. episodic mass loss) and complex astrophysics (e.g. dependence on metalicty). One of the major areas of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is the search for and study of luminous supernovae. In this talk, I will first summarize the PTF project and then focus on the search and study of luminous supernovae discovered with PTF. The incipient evidence suggest that the most luminous supernovae (at least in the nearby Universe to which PTF is well suited) arise in tiny galaxies. With PTF we expect to find a few supernovae for every month of observing. The future prospects are excellent for this field.
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