supernova host galaxies

Despite the importance of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) as cosmological distance indicators, much remains unknown about the environments in which they happen. Past studies have shown that supernova properties relate to host galaxy properties, and that SN Ia host galaxies are similar to random field galaxies. Research on host properties has largely focused on more luminous galaxies, leaving low-luminosity hosts under-sampled.

As an intern at Carnegie Observatories, I conducted a spectroscopic analysis of 45 dim host galaxies of nearby supernovae detected by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN). Using the emission lines from our dataset I measured metallicities and star formation rates, and compared host galaxy properties to SDSS field galaxies and previous SN Ia host samples.

We found that the least massive hosts of Type Ia supernova may have higher metallicities than field galaxies of similar mass, and star formation activity representative of normal field galaxies (Holoien, Berger et al. 2023, ApJ).