Eran O. Ofek

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) High-Energy X-Ray Mission

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Small Explorer mission that carried the first focusing hard X-ray (6-79 keV) telescope into orbit. It was launched on a Pegasus rocket into a low-inclination Earth orbit on June 13, 2012, from Reagan Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll. NuSTAR will carry out a two-year primary science mission. The NuSTAR observatory is composed of the X-ray instrument and the spacecraft. The NuSTAR spacecraft is three-axis stabilized with a single articulating solar array based on Orbital Sciences Corporations LEOStar-2 design. The NuSTAR science instrument consists of two co-aligned grazing incidence optics focusing on to two shielded solid state CdZnTe pixel detectors. The instrument was launched in a compact, stowed configuration, and after launch, a 10-meter mast was deployed to achieve a focal length of 10.15 m. The NuSTAR instrument provides sub-arcminute imaging with excellent spectral resolution over a 12-arcminute field of view. The NuSTAR observatory will be operated out of the Mission Operations Center (MOC) at UC Berkeley. Most science targets will be viewed for a week or more. The science data will be transferred from the UC Berkeley MOC to a Science Operations Center (SOC) located at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In this paper, we will describe the mission architecture, the technical challenges during the development phase, and the post-launch activities.

The Palomar Transient Factory: System Overview, Performance, and First Results

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a fully-automated, wide-field survey aimed at a systematic exploration of the optical transient sky. The transient survey is performed using a new 8.1 square degree camera installed on the 48 inch Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Observatory; colors and light curves for detected transients are obtained with the automated Palomar 60 inch telescope. PTF uses 80% of the 1.2 m and 50% of the 1.5 m telescope time. With an exposure of 60 s the survey reaches a depth of m_(g′) ≈ 21.3 and m_R ≈ 20.6 (5σ, median seeing). Four major experiments are planned for the five-year project: (1) a 5 day cadence supernova search; (2) a rapid transient search with cadences between 90 s and 1 day; (3) a search for eclipsing binaries and transiting planets in Orion; and (4) a 3π sr deep H-alpha survey. PTF provides automatic, real-time transient classification and follow-up, as well as a database including every source detected in each frame. This paper summarizes the PTF project, including several months of on-sky performance tests of the new survey camera, the observing plans, and the data reduction strategy. We conclude by detailing the first 51 PTF optical transient detections, found in commissioning data.

Exploring the Optical Transient Sky with the Palomar Transient Factory

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) is a wide-field experiment designed to investigate the optical transient and variable sky on time scales from minutes to years. PTF uses the CFH12k mosaic camera, with a field of view of 7.9 deg^2 and a plate scale of 1″ pixel^(-1), mounted on the Palomar Observatory 48 inch Samuel Oschin Telescope. The PTF operation strategy is devised to probe the existing gaps in the transient phase space and to search for theoretically predicted, but not yet detected, phenomena, such as fallback supernovae, macronovae, .Ia supernovae, and the orphan afterglows of gamma-ray bursts. PTF will also discover many new members of known source classes, from cataclysmic variables in their various avatars to supernovae and active galactic nuclei, and will provide important insights into understanding galactic dynamics (through RR Lyrae stars) and the solar system (asteroids and near-Earth objects). The lessons that can be learned from PTF will be essential for the preparation of future large synoptic sky surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. In this article we present the scientific motivation for PTF and describe in detail the goals and expectations for this experiment.

Relativistic ejecta from X-ray flash XRF 060218 and the rate of cosmic explosions

Over the past decade, long-duration γ-ray bursts (GRBs)—including the subclass of X-ray flashes (XRFs)—have been revealed to be a rare variety of type Ibc supernova. Although all these events result from the death of massive stars, the electromagnetic luminosities of GRBs and XRFs exceed those of ordinary type Ibc supernovae by many orders of magnitude. The essential physical process that causes a dying star to produce a GRB or XRF, and not just a supernova, is still unknown. Here we report radio and X-ray observations of XRF 060218 (associated with supernova SN 2006aj), the second-nearest GRB identified until now. We show that this event is a hundred times less energetic but ten times more common than cosmological GRBs. Moreover, it is distinguished from ordinary type Ibc supernovae by the presence of 1048 erg coupled to mildly relativistic ejecta, along with a central engine (an accretion-fed, rapidly rotating compact source) that produces X-rays for weeks after the explosion. This suggests that the production of relativistic ejecta is the key physical distinction between GRBs or XRFs and ordinary supernovae, while the nature of the central engine (black hole or magnetar) may distinguish typical bursts from low-luminosity, spherical events like XRF 060218.

Supernova SN 2011fe from an exploding carbon–oxygen white dwarf star

Type Ia supernovae have been used empirically as ‘standard candles’ to demonstrate the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe even though fundamental details, such as the nature of their progenitor systems and how the stars explode, remain a mystery. There is consensus that a white dwarf star explodes after accreting matter in a binary system, but the secondary body could be anything from a main-sequence star to a red giant, or even another white dwarf. This uncertainty stems from the fact that no recent type Ia supernova has been discovered close enough to Earth to detect the stars before explosion. Here we report early observations of supernova SN 2011fe in the galaxy M101 at a distance from Earth of 6.4 megaparsecs. We find that the exploding star was probably a carbon–oxygen white dwarf, and from the lack of an early shock we conclude that the companion was probably a main-sequence star. Early spectroscopy shows high-velocity oxygen that slows rapidly, on a timescale of hours, and extensive mixing of newly synthesized intermediate-mass elements in the outermost layers of the supernova. A companion paper uses pre-explosion images to rule out luminous red giants and most helium stars as companions to the progenitor.

Supernova 2007bi as a pair-instability explosion

Stars with initial masses such that 10 ≤ Minitial ≤ 100, where is the solar mass, fuse progressively heavier elements in their centres, until the core is inert iron. The core then gravitationally collapses to a neutron star or a black hole, leading to an explosion—an iron-core-collapse supernova. By contrast, extremely massive stars with Minitial ≥ 140 (if such exist) develop oxygen cores with masses, Mcore, that exceed 50, where high temperatures are reached at relatively low densities. Conversion of energetic, pressure-supporting photons into electron–positron pairs occurs before oxygen ignition and leads to a violent contraction which triggers a nuclear explosion that unbinds the star in a pair-instability supernova. Transitional objects with 100 < Minitial < 140 may end up as iron-core-collapse supernovae following violent mass ejections, perhaps as a result of brief episodes of pair instability, and may already have been identified. Here we report observations of supernova SN 2007bi, a luminous, slowly evolving object located within a dwarf galaxy. We estimate the exploding core mass to be Mcore ≈ 100, in which case theory unambiguously predicts a pair-instability supernova. We show that >3 of radioactive 56Ni was synthesized during the explosion and that our observations are well fitted by models of pair-instability supernovae. This indicates that nearby dwarf galaxies probably host extremely massive stars, above the apparent Galactic stellar mass limit, which perhaps result from processes similar to those that created the first stars in the Universe.

Hydrogen-poor superluminous stellar explosions

Supernovae are stellar explosions driven by gravitational or thermonuclear energy that is observed as electromagnetic radiation emitted over weeks or more. In all known supernovae, this radiation comes from internal energy deposited in the outflowing ejecta by one or more of the following processes: radioactive decay of freshly synthesized elements (typically 56Ni), the explosion shock in the envelope of a supergiant star, and interaction between the debris and slowly moving, hydrogen-rich circumstellar material. Here we report observations of a class of luminous supernovae whose properties cannot be explained by any of these processes. The class includes four new supernovae that we have discovered and two previously unexplained events (SN 2005ap and SCP 06F6) that we can now identify as members of the same class. These supernovae are all about ten times brighter than most type Ia supernova, do not show any trace of hydrogen, emit significant ultraviolet flux for extended periods of time and have late-time decay rates that are inconsistent with radioactivity. Our data require that the observed radiation be emitted by hydrogen-free material distributed over a large radius (∼1015 centimetres) and expanding at high speeds (>104 kilometres per second). These long-lived, ultraviolet-luminous events can be observed out to redshifts z > 4.

A novel explosive process is required for the gamma-ray burst GRB 060614.

Over the past decade, our physical understanding of γ-ray bursts (GRBs) has progressed rapidly, thanks to the discovery and observation of their long-lived afterglow emission. Long-duration (≳2 s) GRBs are associated with the explosive deaths of massive stars (‘collapsars’, ref. 1), which produce accompanying supernovae; the short-duration (≲2 s) GRBs have a different origin, which has been argued to be the merger of two compact objects. Here we report optical observations of GRB 060614 (duration ∼100 s, ref. 10) that rule out the presence of an associated supernova. This would seem to require a new explosive process: either a massive collapsar that powers a GRB without any associated supernova, or a new type of ‘engine’, as long-lived as the collapsar but without a massive star. We also show that the properties of the host galaxy (redshift z = 0.125) distinguish it from other long-duration GRB hosts and suggest that an entirely new type of GRB progenitor may be required.

An Extremely Luminous Panchromatic Outburst from the Nucleus of a Distant Galaxy

A recent bright emission observed by the Swift satellite is due to the sudden accretion of a star onto a massive black hole. Variable x-ray and γ-ray emission is characteristic of the most extreme physical processes in the universe. We present multiwavelength observations of a unique γ-ray–selected transient detected by the Swift satellite, accompanied by bright emission across the electromagnetic spectrum, and whose properties are unlike any previously observed source. We pinpoint the event to the center of a small, star-forming galaxy at redshift z = 0.3534. Its high-energy emission has lasted much longer than any γ-ray burst, whereas its peak luminosity was ∼100 times higher than bright active galactic nuclei. The association of the outburst with the center of its host galaxy suggests that this phenomenon has its origin in a rare mechanism involving the massive black hole in the nucleus of that galaxy.

Exclusion of a luminous red giant as a companion star to the progenitor of supernova SN 2011fe

Weidong Li1, Joshua S. Bloom1, Philipp Podsiadlowski2, Adam A. Miller1, S. Bradley Cenko1, Saurabh W. Jha3, Mark Sullivan2, D. Andrew Howell4,5, Peter E. Nugent6,1, Nathaniel R. Butler7, Eran O. Ofek8,9, Mansi M. Kasliwal10, Joseph W. Richards1,11, Alan Stockton12, Hsin-Yi Shih12, Lars Bildsten5,13, Michael M. Shara14, Joanne Bibby14, Alexei V. Filippenko1, Mohan Ganeshalingam1, Jeffrey M. Silverman1, S. R. Kulkarni8, Nicholas M. Law15, Dovi Poznanski16, Robert M. Quimby8, Curtis McCully3, Brandon Patel3, & Kate Maguire2Type Ia supernovae are thought to result from a thermonuclear explosion of an accreting white dwarf in a binary system, but little is known of the precise nature of the companion star and the physical properties of the progenitor system. There are two classes of models: double-degenerate (involving two white dwarfs in a close binary system) and single-degenerate models. In the latter, the primary white dwarf accretes material from a secondary companion until conditions are such that carbon ignites, at a mass of 1.38 times the mass of the Sun. The type Ia supernova SN 2011fe was recently detected in a nearby galaxy. Here we report an analysis of archival images of the location of SN 2011fe. The luminosity of the progenitor system (especially the companion star) is 10–100 times fainter than previous limits on other type Ia supernova progenitor systems, allowing us to rule out luminous red giants and almost all helium stars as the mass-donating companion to the exploding white dwarf.