AN IR SEARCH FOR EXTINGUISHED SUPERNOVAE IN STARBURST GALAXIES SUBMITTED TO AJ 1998 DECEMBER 13

• Main Authors: Bruce Grossan, Earl Spillar, Norbert Pirzkal, Brian M. Sutin, Paul Johnson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Orca
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.258.1783; http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9812253v1.pdf

IR and Radio band observations of heavily extinguished regions in starburst galaxies suggest a very high SN rate associated with such regions. Optically measured supernova (SN) rates may therefore underestimate the total SN rate by factors of up to 10, due to the very high extinction (AB ~ 10-20 mag) to core-collapse SNe in starburst regions. The IR/radio SN rates come from a variety of indirect means, however, which suffer from model dependence and other problems. We describe a direct measurement of the SN rate from a regular patrol of starburst galaxies done with K ' band imaging to minimize the effects of extinction. A collection of K ' band measurements of core-collapse SNe near maximum light is presented. Such measurements (excluding 1987a) are not well reported in the literature. Results of a preliminary K ' band search using the MIRC camera at the Wyoming IR Observatory (WIRO), and an improved search strategy using the new ORCA optics are described. A monthly patrol of a sample of IRAS bright (mostly starburst) galaxies within 25 Mpc should yield 1.6 – 9.6 SNe per year, corresponding to the range of estimated SN rates. Our initial MIRC search with low-resolution (2.2 " pixels) failed to find extinguished SNe in the IRAS galaxies, limiting the SN rate outside the nucleus (at> 15 " radius) to less than 3.8 Supernova Rate Units (SRU or SNe per century