paper

The rate of Supernovae from the combined sample of five searches

arXiv:astro-ph/9611191

Abstract

With the purpose to obtain new estimates of the rate of supernovae we joined the logs of five SN searches, namely the Asiago, Crimea, Cal{á}n-Tololo and OCA photographic surveys and the visual search by Evans (the sample counts 110 SNe). We found that the most prolific galaxies are late spirals in which most SNe are of type II (0.88 SNu). SN Ib/c are rarer than SN Ia (0.16 and 0.24 SNu, respectively), ruling out previous claims of a very high rate of SNIb/c. We also found that the rate of SN Ia in ellipticals (0.13 SNu) is smaller than in spirals, supporting the hypothesis of different ages of the progenitor systems in early and late type galaxies. Finally, we estimated that even assuming that separate classes of faint SN Ia and SN II do exist (SNe 1991bg and 1987A could be the respective prototypes) the overall SN rate is raised only by 20-30%, therefore excluding that faint SNe represent the majority of SN explosions. Also, the bright SNIIn are intrinsically very rare (2 to 5% of all SNII in spirals).

arXiv comment12 pages, Latex, 5 figures, postscript file also available at http://www.astro.it/supern/preprints.html

Cited by in corpus (12)