From: Alex Conley (aconley@panisse.lbl.gov)
Date: Sat May 10 2003 - 20:22:46 PDT
I have started reading the may 7th draft. First, I'd like to say
that this paper started out good and is getting better with each
iteration. It is wonderfully thorough, especially when compared
with the Tonry et al. (2003) paper which you are avoiding reading.
My first, and most substantial comment is about the use of R_B=2.3 in the
cosmological fits. I have no problem with it per se, but I don't think
that the comparison should always be between your value of 2.3 and
Phillips value of 3.5. Phillips value is of the exact same standing as
your value -- a completely empirical result based only on SNe cosmology
fitting. Once people have accepted the concept of using a value different
than what we use in the Milky Way (4.1), they can't really object to you
finding a different empirical value than Phillips. That is, the
controversy should all be in departing from the Milky Way law, which
is the only one we have studied in detail.
Thus, in Figure 5, when you show the Hubble Diagram, I believe that
your two panels should be R_B = 4.1 and R_B = 2.3, not 3.5 and 2.3, and
except when you discuss Phillips directly, your comparisons should always
be between 4.1 and 2.3.
Additionally, I think you should add a panel to Figure 11 that shows
the difference between 4.1 and 2.3 as a source of systematic uncertainty.
Okay, on to more minor comments (typos and whatnot)
Abstract: You say in the abstract that only one of the 11 SNe
is significantly reddened, but in section 3 you say that there
are two which are clearly reddened (sn1998aw and sn1998as).
pg 6, column 1, first paragraph : I don't think STScI is ever defined
as an acronym (although the Space Telescope Science Institute is
mentioned in the footnote 1)
pg 6, column 2, paragraph 2
The 25 denoting footnote 25 has a funny spacing relative to the sentence
it is in.
pg 7, column 1, paragraph 1:
There are a couple citations that should possibly be put in \citep --
the citation of Holtzmann, Dolphin, and the citation of Fruchter.
pg 7, column 2, paragraph 1:
lessim appears -- add a \
pg 8, column 1, paragraph 1 :
You say that there are 7 SNe without a color measurement, then say
this includes (list of 7). Say are, not include.
pg 8, column 2, paragraph 1 :
I think it should be 'The first 100 days of each of the three templates
are listed in Table 2.' instead of 'is listed in Table 2.', but I could
be wrong.
pg 8, column 2, paragraph 2 :
The same include should be are mistake as above for the zero-float
SNe. That is include -> are, since you list all of them.
pg 10, column 2, paragraph 2 :
refsec:dirtylaundry
pg 13, column 13, paragraph 1 :
The intrinsic error bar should have units -- -0.04 mag
pg 13, column 2, paragraph 1 :
>~ should be replaced with just ~ -- the > is superfluous.
pg 13, colum 2, paragraph 1 :
teh -> the
pg 16, column 1, paragraph 1 :
timescale in timescale stretch is superfluous -- you have already
made use of stretch several times in the paper, so if people don't
already know it has to do with the timescale they are hopelessly
confused by this point.
pg 16, column 2, paragraph 2 :
'This reproduction was performed by modifying the spectral template
exactly as described above' It isn't clear from this sentence what
you mean by above -- do you use the 'smooth multiplicative function'
mentioned a few pages back (which, incidentally, should probably be
described in slighly more detail) or the O'Donnell extinction law
mentioned in the previous paragraph? People may mistakenly assume
that the extinction law was used everywhere (which is, after all,
what Nugent recommends in Nugent, Kim and Perlmutter).
pg 17, column 2, paragraph 1 :
Why were different parameter ranges used for extinction corrected
and non-extinction corrected fits? A little farther down you claim
that your ranges include 99.99 percent of the probability, so one
might be led to guess that your expanded range is because your error
ellipses are that extra bit fatter with extinction correction.
Looking at the error ellipses, this does appear to be true, but
it seems worth pointing out that the decision was made for this
reason.
pg 17, column 2 :
/refsec:colorcor
pg 18, column 1, paragraph 2 :
> 5 sigma outlier, not outliers, since there is only one object
pg 19, column 1, paragraph 2 :
R99 supernovae are not from all a flux -> R99 supernovae are not all
from a flux
pg 21, column 1, paragraph 2:
adpot -> adopt
pg 23, Table 8
Empty areas of table, two fit 8s. I'm sure you already know about
this one.
pg 27, column 1, paragraph 1 :
<~ -> \lessim
pg 27, column 1, paragraph 1 :
'By itself, the supernova data sets a 99% confidence limit of w < -0.5
for any positive value of \Omega_{M}. (When a fit with
extinction corrections applied to the full primary subset
gives a 95% confidence imit of w < -0.5.)'
First, the second sentence isn't a sentence (When what?). Second,
it isn't clear what the data sample in the first sentence is.
Is is all SNe without extinction correction applied?
pg 27, column 2, paragraph 2 :
distance reduced distance
Okay, that's as far as I have read. The downside to this being such
a thorough paper is that it's hard to read straight through, so I'll
take a break and look at the rest later.
Alex
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