9–13 Feb 2026
University of Canterbury
Pacific/Auckland timezone

Exciting new discoveries from recent observations of the Abell 370 galaxy cluster

10 Feb 2026, 13:40
20m
Rātā / Engineering Core Building (University of Canterbury)

Rātā / Engineering Core Building

University of Canterbury

63 Creyke Road, Ilam, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand

Speaker

Justin Pierel

Description

The Abell 370 galaxy cluster is famous for housing the first identified strongly lensed galaxy. The cluster was recently observed by several JWST programs, revealing two supernovae (SNe) that we followed-up with additional JWST imaging and spectroscopy. The first is SN Typhon, a quadruply-imaged, core-collapse SN at z=1.9 with a remarkable rest-frame UV light curve of each of its images from the Hubble Space Telescope. I will show the dataset we now have, including a nebular-phase JWST spectrum, and discuss the implications of the SN for cosmology and SN physics. The second SN is a superluminous SN (SLSN) at z=4.13, the most distant SLSN yet discovered. I will show the early light curve of the SN we have obtained as well as its spectrum, and discuss future plans for additional observations.

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