Previous
abstract 
Next
abstract
On the assumptions that Type Ia supernovae are thermonuclear disruptions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs near the Chandrasekhar mass and that their light curves are powered by nickel and cobalt decay, the characteristic SN Ia peak luminosity can be estimated provided that the ejected nickel mass is known. We use spectrum analysis and a simple analytic model to obtain an improved estimate of the nickel mass. The resulting luminosity estimate, combined with the observational Hubble diagram for SNe Ia, requires a low value of the Hubble constant.
