Selecting superluminous supernovae in faint galaxies from the first year of the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey

Understand

The Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) survey has obtained imaging in 5 bands (grizy_P1) over 10 Medium Deep Survey (MDS) fields covering a total of 70 square degrees.

• This paper describes the search for apparently hostless supernovae (SNe) within the first year of PS1 MDS data with an aim of discovering new superluminous supernovae (SLSNe).
• A total of 249 hostless transients were discovered down to a limiting magnitude of M_AB ~ 23.5, of which 76 were classified as Type Ia SNe.
• There were 57 SNe with complete light curves that are likely core-collapse SNe (CCSNe) or SLSNe and 12 of these have had spectra taken.