Principal Investigator: James DerKacy
PI Institution: Space Telescope Science Institute
Investigators
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Title: The UV Future is Now: Tapping Hubble's UV Spectral Archive to Drive Current and Future Type Ia Supernova Science
Cycle: 31
Abstract
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are foundational objects in modern astronomy. The energy they release drives galactic evolution, the elements synthesized in their explosions enrich their surroundings, and their high intrinsic luminosities make them the most accurate cosmological distance indicators. Yet almost a century of in-depth study has failed to reveal the progenitor systems or explosion mechanisms of SNe Ia. Ultraviolet (UV) spectra are an under-utilized, but valuable resource to answer these lingering questions. UV spectra probe the outermost layers of the SN, where the differences produced by various explosion scenarios are largest, but are inaccessible at other wavelengths. HST's extensive archive of SNe Ia UV spectra, totaling more than 500 orbits and 281 individual spectra, has been severely under-used by studies analyzing the physics of SNe Ia. Here, we propose to use this archive to study the complete sample of HST UV spectral observations in order to catalog and characterize the observed diversity of SNe Ia in the UV, and connect spectral measurements back to the fundamental physics that drive UV spectral formation and SN Ia explosions. Previous UV spectroscopic population studies have only used ~10 objects and are too small to draw robust conclusions about the UV in SNe Ia. This study will serve as the foundation upon which rest-frame UV studies using Rubin/LSST, Roman, and JWST data will be built, and will ensure that the last years of Hubble's UV spectral capacity are maximized by the SN community in the pursuit of new discoveries with SNe Ia.