1994/10/18 by Adam G. Riess, William H. Press, Robert P. Kirshner +1 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Cepheid variable #Cosmic distance ladder #Cosmology #Dark energy #Distance modulus #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Hubble's law #Light curve #Luminosity #Luminosity distance #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Redshift #Stars #Supernova #Type (biology) #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/187704
published as Astrophys.J. 438 (1995) L17-20 · 10 pages + 2 figures, Postscript file includes text and figures, Submitted to Ap.J. (Letters), Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Preprint 4999
arxiv created 1994/10/18 · openalex publication_date 1995/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2019/06/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present an empirical method that uses visual band light curve shapes (LCSs) to estimate the luminosity of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia's). This method is first applied to a "training set" of eight SN Ia light curves with independent distance estimates to derive the correlation between the LCS and the luminosity. We employ a linear estimation algorithm of the type developed by Rybicki and Press. The result is similar to that obtained by Hamuy et al. with the advantage that LCS produces quantitative error estimates for the distance. We then examine the light curves for 13 SN Ia's to determine the LCS distances of these supernovae. The Hubble diagram constructed using these LCS distances has a remarkably small dispersion of σv_ = 0.21 mag. We use the light curve of SN 1972E and the Cepheid distance to NGC 5253 to derive 67 +/- 7 km s-1^ Mpc-1^ for the Hubble constant.