From: Robert A. Knop Jr. (robert.a.knop@vanderbilt.edu)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 06:18:33 PDT
> The strongest limitation is the poor sampling during the first
> 3 weeks after max. We are very dependent on the WIYN time, especially
> the night of May 31. FORS2 and GMOS imaging are a good fall-back
> instruments in case teh TNG and WIYN time in june would be
> insufficient.
>
> Thus, considering the May 31 night as the bottleneck, the upper
> bound on the number of SNe we could follow is given by how many R & I
> data points we can get on that night (mag 23-23.5). According to the ETC
> at http://www.noao.edu/gateway/ccdtime/ it would take ~1 hour/SN.
> As the fields (+14 h, +5 deg) are within an airmass< 2 about 4.5 hours
> during that night. Thus it seems to me that 4-5 z~0.5 SNe could be a
> reasonable number to follow.
>
> Comments and suggestions are, as always, very welcome.
I haven't cranked the numbers, but this intuitively matches what I'd
expect based on a seat-of-the-pants estimate of experience. One comment
though: are you assuming we do just one color? If so, then we'll have
to think about how we're going to get R-I on these supernova. *If* CTIO
is clear with halfway decent seeing all three nights, then the third
search night can be devoted to doing the "off color" where we've found
supernovae (assuming we have a fast enough turnaround).
It's too bad we don't have anything in the middle of may. That "extra"
CTIO night three or four nights after the search could have made a *big*
difference in terms of "rescuing" these lightcurves! A shame.
One additional note: at CTIO we will search a small number of fields at
RA~10-11, and a slightly less small number of fields at RA~15-16. These
searches will be in R-band and will have a depth limit of something
between z=0.5 and z=0.8. (The time was enough for the higher limit, but
the seeing may probably push us down to the lower; see my earlier
E-mails.) This is time we can use at the beginning and end of the WIYN
night; we can probably follow another 3-4 z~0.5 SNe in addition ot the
deepfields I would guess. (Ariel, let me know if youd isagree.)
If the first CTIO night is clear, it will be almost sufficient to search
all of the "shallow" fields at the beginning and end of the night, given
that the reference run was so sad. That will give us time to decide if
we need to do those fields in I-band the third night.
-Rob
-- --Prof. Robert Knop Department of Physics & Astronomy, Vanderbilt University robert.a.knop@vanderbilt.edu
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