Andy Howell
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Selected Press

Superluminous Supernovae

Howell et al. 2013, ApJ
We found two supernovae in the Supernova Legacy Survey that are some of the most powerful and ancient known.  They are 100 times as powerful as a normal core-collapse supernova, which is hard to understand.  

PictureArrow shows SNLS-06D4eu and host.
  • National Geographic
  • Forbes
  • Science Daily
  • International Business Times
  • Times of India
  • UCSB Daily Nexus
  • UCSB Press Release
  • Scientific Article in the Astrophysical Journal

SN Ia from a recurrent nova progenitor

Dilday et al.  2012, Science
We show observations of PTF11kx, a supernova with several shells of gas around it, that we argue indicates that it is from a recurrent nova.  This is the first good evidence of a link between recurrent novae and supernovae.  And it shows that there is more than one path to making a Type Ia supernova.  Follow-up research shows that a fraction of other supernovae, called Type IIn supernovae appear to be like PTF11kx, but have historically been misclassified.
PictureArtist's conception: Romano Corradi
  • NBC/space.com
  • New York Times
  • Time magazine (The Exploding Monty Python Star!)
  • LA Times (has some of the facts wrong)
  • New Scientist (this one is just weird)
  • UCSB press release.
  • Science podcast with Ben Dilday
  • Paper in Science

Eta Carinae light Echo

Rest et al. 2012, Nature
We reobserved the great Eruption of Eta Car 170 years later with LCOGT and other telescopes!  Led by Armin Rest.  Federica Bianco did the LCOGT work.
PictureEta Car as seen with HST.
  • Nature News & Views
  • UCSB Press release (with video)
  • Discovery News  
  • Nature News
  • Time
  • National Geographic
  • Sky & Telescope
  • Ars Technica
  • Science News

Zombie Stars

Howell 2011, Nature Communications
My review article Type Ia Supernovae as Stellar Endpoints and Cosmological Tools.  In the press release I coined the term Zombie Stars, for systems where a dead white dwarf star comes back to life by stealing the "life force" from a living star.  These lead to Type Ia supernovae.
PictureDetail from Kasen et al.
  • Daily Nexus (UCSB student newspaper) Aug. 3)
  • Space.com July 27
  • SB News-Press July 10
  • Astronomy.com
  • EarthSky July 5
  • SB Independent July 4
  • Universe Today July 4
  • Science Daily June 30
  • UPI June 30
  • My favorite:  PaganSpace.net, "The meeting place for the occult community."
  • Paper in Nature Communications [PDF]

The closest SN Ia in a generation

Nugent et al. 2011, Nature
Li et al. 2011, Nature
The SN Ia group in the Palomar Transient Factory discovered SN 2011fe only 11 hours after explosion, the earliest a thermonuclear SN has been caught.  This resulted our first confirmation that the primary star was a carbon-oxygen white dwarf.  There was also no shock and no bright radio emission from the secondary star or its wind, making it difficult to reconcile this supernova with the single degenerate hypothesis.  
PictureBy BJ Fulton, LCOGT Sedgwick Telescope.
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day
  • Bad Astronomy
  • UCSB press release

Super-Chanrasekhar mass supernovae

Howell et al. 2006, Nature
The Type Ia supernova SNLS-03D3bb was the explosion of a white dwarf that exceeded the Chandrasekhar mass.  Type Ia supernovae are thought to be the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star in a binary system with another star.  The white dwarf steals matter from the secondary star until it gets near the Chandrasekhar mass and explodes.  But somehow this white dwarf exceeded the limit.  
PictureArtist's conception of SN destroying a star.
  • News & Views [web],[pdf]
  • New Scientist
  • BBC News
  • MSNBC
  • CBC
  • ABC News
  • Physics World
  • ESPN
  • Space Daily
  • Sky & Telescope
  • AMNH
  • Cosmos Magazine
  • Universe Today, 
  • Science
  • Nature web site
  • BBC Sky at Night (Jan. 2007), 
  • Sky & Telescope (July 2007), 
  • Science News (Oct. 7, 2006), 
  • Western Standard (Oct. 23, 2006), 

Other

A few other articles I've been interviewed for.
Picture
  • Engineering and Technology (UK) magazine article about scientists and engineers in film.  Touches on Doctor Who and Star Trek.
  • Physics today article on supernovae above the Chandrasekhar limit. [pdf]
  • Santa Barbara Independent article on hosting Known Universe.
  • Scientific American article from 2010 on supernovae from white dwarf mergers.
  • Sky & Telescope article from 2010 on supernovae from white dwarf mergers.
  • National Geographic article from 2007

D. Andrew Howell