Speaker: Chris D’Andrea
Location: National Astronomy Meeting of the RAS, University of St. Andrews
I present details of the first discoveries of the eventual ~4000 Type Ia supernovae expected to be found between 0.2 < z < 1.2 over the coming years by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Supernova Survey. DES is a next-generation cosmology experiment that will bring together four complementary probes of dark energy -- supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, weak lensing, and galaxy clusters -- into a single large, well-calibrated survey, strongly improving our constraints on the nature of dark energy. The survey is made possible by DECam, a brand-new 520 megapixel, 3 square-degree optical imager with red-sensitive CCDs that has been installed and commissioned on the 4m Blanco telescope at CTIO. DES undertook a 3-month ‘Science Verification’ (SV) period in 2012B, testing the data quality and survey strategy prior to the nominal start of the 525 night, 5-year program in the 2013B semester. Here I will give an overview of the novel strategy that the DES supernova program will implement; describe what the strategy means for supernova cosmology; and present observations and discoveries made during the SV period that demonstrate the impressive capabilities of DECam.