HST paper - edits and comments to referee

From: Greg Aldering (aldering@panisse.lbl.gov)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 23:48:51 PDT

  • Next message: Robert A. Knop Jr.: "Re: HST Paper -- can I resubmit?"

    Hi Rob,

    In addition to my comments about instances of "no trend with redshift"
    which are still in the current draft, I have the following
    suggestions:

    In the last sentance of the abstract I suggest you try "This assumption-free
    host-galaxy extinction correction requires dark energy with probability
    P > 0.99" since the current wording suggests that one might be suprised
    by this result.

    Regarding point 3 in the reply to the referee, I suggest that we remove
    the parenthetical claim that we will publish the spectra in the next
    year. I think your explaination to the referee is adequate without this,
    and the statement in the text is awkward.

    Regarding point 4 in the reply to the referee, I would strike "This plot ...
    ... deemed appropriate." and simply say that "As can be seen, there are
    no significant trends in stretch with redshift."

    At the end of page 12, one of the edits I suggested seems to have been
    misplaced. I suggested "Note that there are correlated errors between
    all the ground-based points for each supernova in these figures, as a
    single ground-based zeropoint was used to scale each of them together
    with their HST photometry."

    Regarding point 7 in the reply to the referee I would add "We have had
    a similar discussion with Farrah but have found his arguments to rely
    on a biased reading of the literature. Our modeling using the newest
    Galactic dust and stellar scale-heights from Drummel and Spergel give
    results which agree with Hatano et al and which also fit the Phillips
    1999 SN extinction distribution slightly better. Therefore, we think
    this point is supported by the latest literature. Further, we note that
    part of our argument ... with that approach." Then, I would strike the
    new text that you have added since it seems largely redundant or obvious.

    Regarding point 8 in the reply to the referee, I suggest instead:
    "This higher incidence of extincted SNe at the low-redshift end of
    our sample arises because in a flux-limited survey extincted supernovae
    can only be detected at lower redshifts."

    Regarding point 18 in the reply to the referee, I suggest a much
    milder modification. Right before "Note that in this fit ..." I would
    add "Recent data on eight high-redshift supernovae from Tonry et al 2003
    are consistent with these results." I would eliminate the full paragraph
    devoted to Tonry et al.

    Also, I would remove the word "team" from "... team to derive ..."

    Regarding point 12 in the reply to the referee, the added text seems to
    hijack the paragraph. Perhaps a new paragraph starting with "A fit with
    extinction ..." would work better. Also, I would strike "in particular"
    from the sentance "However, in particular, this latter ..." I would also
    say "... to that of the ..." rather than "... to the one from ..."

    On page 26 "$chi^2$" should be "$\chi^2$"

    In the first paragraph on page 31, the second sentance starts with
    "The size of the effect" and the next paragraph starts with "These effects"
    as a result of an edit I suggested. It would be good to avoid using
    "effect(s)" to start both sentances.

    On page 32 the word "suggested" occurs twice in the same sentance. I
    recommend replacing "... suggested as an indicator ..." with "... a
    possible indicator ..."

    Regarding point 15 in the reply to the referee, I suggest a milder
    surrender (and some wordsmithing) beginning on page 33 with "This
    comparison is shown ... in the low-redshift supernovae." instead say
    "Figure 13 shows that the HST high-redshift supernovae are found at
    similar stretches and luminosities as the low-redshift supernova. The
    low- and high-redshift samples are consist with the same
    stretch-luminosity relationship, although it is the low-redshift
    supernovae which require a non-zero slope for this relationship."

    On page 37, "4-m" should be "4m" to be consistent with the rest of the
    text.

    I will repeat my question concerning Table 6 - are there error bars
    on the U-B values that we should quote?

    I didn't see any difference between the old and new versions of Figure 3.
    In the reply to the referee you said that the old histogram was in error.

    Do you really think it is necessary to list all the minute changes in the
    text, in the section "Small textual changes"? I don't think that is what
    is meant by "detail the revisions ..."

    That's all I have. I have not addressed any reworking of the closing
    paragraph, nor a Hubble diagram with binned data.

    - Greg



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