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J. C. Seguel (Universidad de Concepción/CTIO), L.-G. Strolger (University of Michigan/CTIO), R. C. Smith (CTIO), NGSS Project Team
The Nearby Galaxies Supernova Search (NGSS) campaigns have successfully discovered ~5 supernovae and strong supernovae candidates over the past 2 years. However, to obtain accurate statistics such as SN rates, it is important to know the depth to which we can efficiently detect objects, and thus the effective limiting magnitudes of the campaigns.
We have begun this analysis by conducting some simple Monte Carlo test on our ability to recover false supernova from a sample search frames. Based on our definition of limiting magnitude, we find that the searches, on average, reach limiting magnitudes of R~1. This is deep enough to recover Type Ia supernovae, one week before maximum light, to redshifts of roughly z\le0.15. We also find that searching by eye has been uniformly more effective than our retrieval program, finding objects on average 1/2 a magnitude deeper. We also discuss ways of improving these tests for more accurate statistics.
This project was completed during the CTIO REU/PIA program in Summer 2000.