Selected Press
Superluminous SupernovaeHowell 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. ![]() |
SN Ia from a recurrent nova progenitorDilday 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. ![]()
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Eta Carinae light EchoRest 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. ![]() |
Zombie StarsHowell 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. ![]()
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The closest SN Ia in a generationNugent 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. ![]()
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Super-Chanrasekhar mass supernovaeHowell 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. ![]() |
OtherA few other articles I've been interviewed for.
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