7–11 Dec 2026
The University of Sydney
Australia/Sydney timezone
AIP Congress 2026

From OzDES to TiDES: which supernova host galaxies get left behind?

Not scheduled
20m
Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Belinda Hutchinson Building

The University of Sydney

Abercrombie St & Codrington St NSW 2008
Poster AIP | Astronomy (ASTRO)

Speaker

Mr Alan Chan (Mount Stromlo Observatory, The Australian National University)

Description

Type Ia supernovae remain one of the key observational probes of dark energy, but their cosmological constraining power depends on constructing Hubble diagrams with well-understood biases. In future high-statistics time-domain surveys, including TiDES and LSST-era spectroscopic follow-up programmes, host-galaxy redshifts will often need to be obtained under finite spectroscopic resources. It is therefore important to understand whether shallow host-galaxy follow-up recovers all galaxy populations equally, and whether any missed hosts could introduce biases into supernova cosmology.

Using OzDES DR2 spectra together with DES-SN5YR host-galaxy data, we construct shallow three-exposure spectra for 1,280 supernova host galaxies and test redshift recovery using MARZ. We find a strong host-dependent selection effect: star-forming hosts are recovered with 35.9% completeness, while passive hosts are recovered with only 16.4% completeness. This difference arises because narrow nebular emission lines remain identifiable at low signal-to-noise, whereas passive galaxies rely primarily on weaker continuum and absorption features.

These results show that shallow spectroscopic follow-up does not simply reduce the total number of recovered redshifts; it systematically changes the recovered host-galaxy population. We are extending this analysis by simulating how host-dependent redshift-recovery incompleteness propagates into DES-like Hubble diagrams, and by applying this bias framework to future surveys such as TiDES and LSST-era supernova samples. This work provides a data-driven approach for identifying, quantifying, and eventually correcting spectroscopic selection effects in next-generation supernova dark-energy measurements.

I am the presenting author Yes

Author

Mr Alan Chan (Mount Stromlo Observatory, The Australian National University)

Co-author

Prof. Christopher Lidman (Mount Stromlo Observatory, The Australian National University)

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