Re: Evolution reply to comments

From: Chris Lidman (clidman@eso.org)
Date: Tue Feb 22 2005 - 15:56:09 PST

  • Next message: Gabriele Garavini: "Re: Reply to Handy's"

    Hi Gabriele,
      Thanks for the reply. I forwarded your paper to Andy and he has
    provided some additional comments. Andy's comments consist of
    grammatical corrections, which I reproduce below, and an important
    question regarding host galaxy subtraction.

      Before I list Andy's comments, I'd like to add to my point concerning
    the significance of the difference seen in figure 5.

      The test you have done is to test whether high redshift SNe are more
    similar to low redshift normal SNe or to low redshift underluminous SNe.
    You have found the former to be true. However, this does not mean that
    they are the same as low redshift normal supernova. Hence, you cannot
    conclude that there is no evolution. For this, you need to conduct a
    more sophisticated test.

      It may not be easy to do this in 2 dimensions. In 1D, the
    obvious tests would be the KS test and Student's t-test.
    However, using a web search, I found the following web page
    which describes a 2D KS test.
      
    http://beowulf.lcs.mit.edu/18.337-2002/projects-2002/ianchan/KS2D/Project%20Page.html

    Have a look and let me know what you think.

      In addition to Andy's comment regarding host galaxy subtraction, one
    should note that the bias could go either way. In some cases, you might
    subtract too much host and in other cases you might subtract too little.
    Currently, the paper assumes that the error in the subtraction is 10%.
    Where does this percentage come from? I think that this needs more
    justification.

    Cheers, Chris.

    Start of Andy's comments
    ========================

    Comment #1

    The largest source of uncertainty is the host galaxy subtraction. Yet
    this is swept under the rug. If this was done using the determination
    from my program, for example, you can't trust any of the conclusions
    from the paper. My program simultaneously fits host galaxy and SN
    templates. In other words, it *assumes* that the high-z spectra is
    similar to a low-z one and subtracts an amount of host light such that
    the high-z and low-z spectra will look similar. The proper thing to do
    would be to use the photometry (e.g. percent increase) to constrain the
    amount of host galaxy light, and to use imaging and spectral features to
    constrain the host characteristics. You might be able to say some
    spectrum has 30% host +/- 10%, and is either an E, SO, or Sa. Then you
    could do different subtractions in that parameter space and test the
    results. Defining a technique like this would be a great addition to
    this paper because any time people use high-z spectra they are going to
    have to do something like this.

    Comment #2
    ==========

    One other point -- in the SNLS we have many 91T/99aa SNe at high
    redshift. So there is no need to make a big deal out of having one in
    the sample, as this paper does.

    Minor comments
    ==============

    p. 1
    Intro, par. 1 -- plural of supernova is supernovae
    tidly ????
    par. 4 it should be pointed out that the effect metallicity has
    on the spectrum pointed out by Hoeflich and Lentz are only for
    early-time
    spectra, of which there aren't many here.

    par. 6 -- I have submitted a paper on SNLS gemini spectra -- Howell et
    al.
    2005, ApJ, submitted

    p. 2, section 2.1 last sentence, One SNe -> One supernova

    last paragraph of section -- two days is no longer the uncertainty for
    the
    spectroscopic epoch determination in Hook et al.

    section 2.3, par 1 -- you say EWS but it is not defined yet.

    p. 4
    table 2 'Si' should be 'Si 4000' since you say it is absent in
    underluminous SNe.

    first paragraph on page - there is a period missing before SN 2002fd

    p. 5
    3.1, 3rd par. "uncertainty in the redshifts is taken to be 300 km/s if
    the
    redshift was estimated from galaxy lines..."
    shouldn't this be proportional to the redshift?

    3.2 first sentence -- delete ", they" and second comma.

    p. 6
    "possible involved" delete involved

    p. 7 last par in 3.2.1 delete space in "spectra ,"

    3.2.3, 4th par -- delete space: "( with"

    p. 8 3.3 miss-identification -> misidentification
    this whole parenthetical expression should be made into a new sentence
    because it is confusing with "uncertainties" written twice in a row.
       

    On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 05:24, Gabriele Garavini wrote:
    > I'm very sorry chris I sent by mistake the wrong file.
    > Here is the one I meant to send.
    > Thanks
    > Gabriele
    >
    > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Chris Lidman wrote:
    >
    > > Hi Gabriele,
    > > Could you resend the attachment. The one I received seems to be
    > > chopped at the end.
    > >
    > > Regards,
    > >
    > > Chris.
    > >
    > > On Mon, 2005-02-21 at 13:29, Gabriele Garavini wrote:
    > > > Dear Chris
    > > >
    > > > thanks you very much for the careful reading of the paper. I've
    > > > implements most of you comments. Please find all my answers in the
    > > > attached file. I also changed extensively the section about EW (3.2) I
    > > > hope this will allow us to go to submission shortly.
    > > >
    > > > Thanks again
    > > > Hasta la vista.
    > > > Cheers
    > > > Gabriele
    > >
    > >
    > >



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