Witnessing History: Rates and Detectability of Naked-Eye Milky-Way Supernovae

Abstract

The Milky Way hosts on average a few supernova explosions per century, yet in the past millennium only five supernovae have been identified confidently in the historical record. This deficit of naked-eye supernovae is at least partly due to dust extinction in the Galactic plane. We explore this effect quantitatively, developing a formalism for the supernova probability distribution, accounting for dust and for the observer's flux limit. We then construct a fiducial axisymmetric model for the supernova and dust densities, featuring an exponential dependence on galactocentric radius and height, with core-collapse events in a thin disk and Type Ia events including a thick disk component. When no flux limit is applied, our model predicts supernovae are intrinsically concentrated in the Galactic plane, with Type Ia events extending to higher latitudes reflecting their thick disk component. We then apply a flux limit and include dust effects, to predict the sky distribution of historical supernovae. We use well-observed supernovae as light-curve templates, and introduce naked-eye discovery criteria. The resulting sky distributions are strikingly inconsistent with the locations of confident historical supernovae, none of which lie near our model's central peaks. Indeed, SN 1054 lies off the plane almost exactly in the anticenter, and SN 1181 is in the 2nd Galactic quadrant. We discuss possible explanations for these discrepancies. We calculate the percentage of all supernovae bright enough for historical discovery: $\simeq 13\%$ of core-collapse and $\simeq 33\%$ of Type Ia events. Using these and the confident historical supernovae, we estimate the intrinsic Galactic supernova rates, finding general agreement with other methods. Finally, we urge searches for supernovae in historical records from civilizations in the southern hemisphere.

arXiv comment18 pages, 17 figures. Comments welcome

References in corpus (55)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• Measuring Reddening with SDSS Stellar Spectra and Recalibrating SFD
• A Unified Approach to the Classical Statistical Analysis of Small Signals
• A 3D Dust Map Based on Gaia, Pan-STARRS 1 and 2MASS
• Nearby Supernova Rates from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search. II. The Observed Luminosity Functions and Fractions of Supernovae in a Complete Sample
• Birth and Evolution of Isolated Radio Pulsars
• Star counts in the Galaxy. Simulating from very deep to very shallow photometric surveys with the TRILEGAL code
• An Open Catalog for Supernova Data
• Supernova Neutrino Detection
• The Expansion Asymmetry and Age of the Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant
• SOUSA: the Swift Optical/Ultraviolet Supernova Archive
• A revised catalogue of 294 Galactic supernova remnants
• Observing the Next Galactic Supernova
• SNEWS: The SuperNova Early Warning System
• Tycho Brahe's 1572 supernova as a standard type Ia explosion revealed from its light echo spectrum
• Core-Collapse Supernovae and Host Galaxy Stellar Populations
• The Youngest Galactic Supernova Remnant: G1.9+0.3
• Super and Massive AGB Stars: II - Nucleosynthesis and Yields - Z=0.02, 0.008 and 0.004
• Long Gamma-Ray Bursts and Type Ic Core Collapse Supernovae Have Similar Locations in Hosts
• Are the Models for Type Ia Supernova Progenitors Consistent with the Properties of Supernova Remnants?
• The Blue Tip of the Stellar Locus: Measuring Reddening with the SDSS
• Search for Supernova Neutrino Bursts at Super-Kamiokande
• On the rate of core collapse supernovae in the Milky Way
• The Crab Nebula and the class of Type IIn-P supernovae caused by sub-energetic electron capture explosions
• The X-ray synchrotron emission of RCW 86 and the implications for its age
• BVRI lightcurves of supernovae SN 2011fe in M101, SN 2012aw in M95, and SN 2012cg in NGC 4424
• SN 2011ht: Confirming a Class of Interacting Supernovae with Plateau Light Curves (Type IIn-P)
• An Optically Targeted Search for Gravitational Waves emitted by Core-Collapse Supernovae during the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• RCW 86: A Type Ia Supernova in a Wind-Blown Bubble
• Constraints on the distribution of supernova remnants with Galactocentric radius
• Measuring Distances and Reddenings for a Billion Stars: Towards A 3D Dust Map from Pan-STARRS 1
• SNEWS 2.0: A Next-Generation SuperNova Early Warning System for Multi-messenger Astronomy
• The Type IIP Supernova 2012aw in M95: hydrodynamical modelling of the photospheric phase from accurate spectrophotometric monitoring
• Lick Observatory Supernova Search Follow-Up Program: Photometry Data Release of 93 Type Ia Supernovae
• Naked eye star visibility and limiting magnitude mapped from DMSP-OLS satellite data
• New Estimates of the Solar-Neighborhood Massive-Stars Birthrate and the Galactic Supernova Rate
• The Berkeley sample of Type II supernovae: BVRI light curves and spectroscopy of 55 SNe II
• A Thorough Investigation of Distance and Age of the Pulsar Wind Nebula 3C58
• SN 2016coi/ASASSN-16fp: An example of residual helium in a type Ic supernova?
• Gamma-ray Emission of 60Fe and 26Al Radioactivities in our Galaxy
• One year of monitoring of the Type IIb supernova SN 2011dh
• G11.2-0.3: The Young Remnant of a Stripped-Envelope Supernova
• Supernovae and their host galaxies - IV. The distribution of supernovae relative to spiral arms
• Radio Observations of Supernova Remnant G1.9+0.3
• Galactic 26Al traces metal loss through hot chimneys
• Distribution and kinematics of 26Al in the Galactic disc
• Supernova 1604, Kepler's supernova, and its remnant
• G7.7-3.7: a young supernova remnant probably associated with the guest star in 386 CE (SN 386)
• Supernova Neutrino Burst Monitor at the Baksan Underground Scintillation Telescope
• Using Gamma Ray Monitoring to Avoid Missing the Next Milky Way Type Ia Supernova
• Near-Earth Supernova Explosions: Evidence, Implications, and Opportunities
• A Search for the modern counterparts of the Far Eastern guest stars 369 CE, 386 CE, and 393 CE
• Supernova of 1006 (G327.6+14.6)
• Formation and evolution of the local interstellar environment: combined constraints from nucleosynthetic and X-ray data

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• r-Process Radioisotopes from Near-Earth Supernovae and Kilonovae
• X-Ray Luminous Supernovae: Threats to Terrestrial Biospheres
• Vorticity and magnetic dynamo from subsonic expansion waves
• Supernova explosions of runaway stars and young neutron stars above the Galactic plane