The Distance to SN 1999em from the Expanding Photosphere Method

By M. Hamuy, P. Pinto, J. Maza, N. Suntzeff, M. Phillips, R. Eastman, R. Smith, C. Corbally, David Burstein, Yong Li and 14 more. 2001

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We present optical and infrared spectroscopy of the first 2 months of evolution of the Type II supernova SN 1999em. We combine these data with high-quality optical/infrared photometry beginning only 3 days after shock breakout, in order to study the performance of the "expanding photosphere method" (EPM) in the determination of distances. With this purpose, we develop a technique to measure accurate photospheric velocities by cross-correlating observed and model spectra. The application of this technique to SN 1999em shows that we can reach an average uncertainty of 11% in velocity from an individual spectrum. Our analysis shows that EPM is quite robust to the effects of dust. In particular, the distances derived from the VI filters change by only 7% when the adopted visual extinction in the host galaxy is varied by 0.45 mag. The superb time sampling of the BVIZJHK light curves of SN 1999em permits us to study the internal consistency of EPM and test the dilution factors computed from atmosphere models for Type II plateau supernovae. We find that, in the first week since explosion, the EPM distances are up to 50% lower than the average, possibly because of the presence of circumstellar material. Over the following 65 days, on the other hand, our tests lend strong credence to the atmosphere models, and confirm previous claims that EPM can produce consistent distances without having to craft specific models to each supernova. This is particularly true for the VI filters, which yield distances with an internal consistency of 4%. From the whole set of BVIZJHK photometry, we obtain an average distance of 7.5 ± 0.5 Mpc, where the quoted uncertainty (7%) is a conservative estimate of the internal precision of the method obtained from the analysis of the first 70 days of the supernova evolution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/02f06d8413a4445df49fa6b49de7a79f83e45335

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Filippenko
2. S. Smartt
3. N. Smith
4. Weidong Li
5. Ryan Chornock
6. S. Jha
7. R. Kirshner
8. W. Freedman

Citations in the corpus

• The Carnegie Supernova Project: The Low‐Redshift Survey (2005, methodology): “…refine precise techniques for measuring luminosity distances employing the Expanding Photosphere Method (Eastman et al. 1996; Schmidt et al. 1994; Hamuy et al. 2001; Leonard et al. 2002; Dessart & Hillier 2005) or the Standardized Candle Method (Hamuy & Pinto 2002), thereby providing an…”
• Optical and near infrared coverage of SN 2004et: physical parameters and comparison with other type IIP supernovae (2009, methodology): “…only four IIP SNe for which extended photometric and spectral monitoring observations have been published; SN 1990E (Schmidt et al. 1993; Benetti et al. 1994), SN 1999em (Elmhamdi et al. 2003; Leonard et al. 2002a; Hamuy et al. 2001), SN 1999gi (Leonard et al. 2002b) and SN 2005cs (Pastorello etal.”
• Photometric and spectroscopic evolution of the Type IIP supernova SN 2004et (2006, methodology): “A comparison of the photospheric expansion velocity determined for SN 2004et, using the weak unblended iron lines, with those of SN 1999em (Hamuy et al. 2001) and SN 1999gi (Leonard et al. 2002b) indicates that SN 2004et has a higher expansion velocity at similar epochs.”
• Distance determinations using Type II supernovae and the expanding photosphere method (2005, background): “Such formulations have been used by observers to obtain distance estimates to type II SN (see, e.g., Schmidt et al. 1994a,b; E96; H01; L02).”
• CHARACTERIZING THE V-BAND LIGHT-CURVES OF HYDROGEN-RICH TYPE II SUPERNOVAE (2014, methodology): “Mtail V -band magnitudes are converted into bolometric luminosities using the bolometric correction derived by Hamuy et al. (2001), together with the distance moduli and extinction values SNe IIV -band light-curves 17 reported in Table 622.”
• Optical and Infrared Spectroscopy of SN 1999ee and SN 1999ex (2002, methodology): “Finally, we computed the synthetic V-band magnitude from the resulting spectra (following the precepts described in Appendix B of Hamuy et al. 2001), and we grayshifted them so that the flux level matched our observed V magnitudes.”
• A Study of the Type II-Plateau Supernova 1999gi and the Distance to its Host Galaxy, NGC 3184 (2002, methodology): “(The EPM analyses of Hamuy et al. 2001 and L02 are also consistent with low reddening for SN 1999em.)”
• SN 2005cs in M51 – II. Complete evolution in the optical and the near-infrared (2009, background): “…those of a few well observed SNe IIP: the peculiar SN 1987A (see Whitelock et al. 1989, and references therein), the normal luminosity SN 1999em (Hamuy et al. 2001; Leonard et al. 2002b; Elmhamdi et al. 2003a; Krisciunas et al. 2009), and the low-luminosity SNe 1999br and 1999eu (Hamuy 2003;…”
• The Distance to SN 1999em in NGC 1637 from the Expanding Photosphere Method (2001, methodology): “…telluric features have on observed photometric data, as well as a subtle correction to the BVRI filter functions of Bessell [1990] to make them appropriate for use with photon, and not energy, distributions, Hamuy et al. (2001) has provided improved estimates of ζ(Tc), which we adopt in this paper.”
• Type II-Plateau supernova radiation: dependences on progenitor and explosion properties (2013, methodology): “We choose SN 1999em (Hamuy et al. 2001; Leonard et al. 2002), and adopt the distance of 11.5 Mpc and reddeningE(B − V ) = 0.1 mag inferred by Dessart & Hillier (2006).”