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Session 85 - Cosmology: Observations.
Display session, Friday, January 09
Exhibit Hall,
We present an empirical method which measures the distance to a Type Ia Supernova with a precision of \sim 10% from a single night's data. This method measures the supernova's age and luminosity/light curve parameter from a spectrum, and the extinction and distance from a photometric epoch. We are able to verify the precision of this method from error propagation calculations, Monte Carlo simulations of well-sampled SNe Ia, and the Hubble diagram of scarcely observed supernovae. With the reduction in telescope time needed, this method is 3 to 4 times more efficient for measuring cosmological parameters than conventional light curve based distance estimates.
