Research Seminars @ Illinois

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Tailored for undergraduate researchers, this calendar is a curated list of research seminars at the University of Illinois. Explore the diverse world of research and expand your knowledge through engaging sessions designed to inspire and enlighten.

To have your events added or removed from this calendar, please contact OUR at ugresearch@illinois.edu

Dark Energy

The Present and Future of A New Era in High-Redshift Supernova Discovery

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Astronomy
Location
134 Astronomy Building
Virtual
wifi event
Date
Oct 8, 2024   3:45 - 4:45 pm  
Speaker
Professor Justin Pierel
Contact
Daniel Franco
E-Mail
danielf9@illinois.edu
Phone
217-300-6769
Views
65
Originating Calendar
Astronomy Colloquium Speaker Calendar

The high-redshift transient universe has been an unexplored field of astrophysics due to the vast amount of resources required to discover supernovae (SNe) at z>1. Even with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), discoveries of the most distant stellar explosions have been restricted to z~2, including with the aid of gravitational lensing. Spectroscopy is critical to both classification and characterization of high-redshift SNe, but it is even more difficult than imaging and has been limited to z~1.5. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we have entered a new era of high-redshift SN discovery and understanding. In a relatively short time JWST has expanded our view of the transient universe to z~5, including hundreds of SNe and dozens of rest-frame UV-IR spectra for transients reaching z=3.6. The JWST SN sample with both imaging and spectroscopy now includes the most distant Type Ia SNe (used for cosmological measurements) yet discovered, three strongly lensed SNe, and a wide variety of core-collapse SN sub-types from a previously unexplored phase of the transient universe. I will summarize the range of discoveries made in the first ~2 years of JWST observations, the constraints gleaned from these exciting new objects, and our ongoing efforts to build the first statistical samples of high-redshift SNe. Looking ahead, these SNe give us a glimpse at what we can expect from the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will revolutionize the discovery of distant stellar explosions.

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