Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Light a Single Candle: Studying Supernovae

Published

Author(s)

Dianne M. O'Leary, Bert W. Rust

Abstract

At peak luminosity, Type Ia supernovae can be even brighter than their parent galaxies, and their light curves display a very uniform and regular behavior. This makes them excellent candidates for a role as standard candles in measuring the distances to their galaxies. This tutorial paper shows the student how to develop a mathematical model for the light curve and to fit that model to actual observed light curves in order to estimate the parameters that will be used to calibrate the standard candle.
Citation
Computing in Science & Engineering
Volume
14

Keywords

type Ia supervovae, light curve modelling, radioactive decay chains, nonlinear least squares, variable projection algorithm

Citation

O'Leary, D. and Rust, B. (2012), Light a Single Candle: Studying Supernovae, Computing in Science & Engineering, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2012.28 (Accessed December 2, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created February 29, 2012, Updated October 12, 2021