The Local Environments of Low-Redshift Supernovae

I aimed to characterize the local (~2 kpc) environments of Type Ia, II, and Ibc supernovae (SNe) by measuring the ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) emission at supernova (SN) sites. Measuring the amount of host galaxy emission at SN sites gives insight into their progenitor population and allows one to search for consistency between the star formation rate and the SN rate. Starting with an atlas of ~16,000 local (d < 50 Mpc) galaxies, I selected 472 SNe that occurred in 359 low-inclination, nearby galaxies using The Open Supernova Catalog. I located each SN in UV and IR images that highlight regions of young stars, old stars, and dust. These images were observed by NASA's GALEX and WISE missions. I sought to test the hypothesis that Type Ia SNe (SNe Ia) track the starlight of their host galaxies, whereas core-collapse SNe, which are Type II (SNe II) and Type Ibc (SNe Ibc), are tightly linked to regions of young stars and active star formation. Following previous works, I adopted a pixel statistics method to generate cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of UV and IR emission within a 2 kpc region of the explosion site for each SN type. I found that, generally, SNe Ia follow near-IR (W1) light, which traces the total distribution of all stars in a galaxy. SNe II are distributed like that of a combination of mid-IR (W4) and far-UV (FUV) emission that traces recent star formation. SNe Ibc appear to track emission from small, hot dust grains as traced by W3 emission. Finally, I estimated that the SN rate for galaxies with d < 50 Mpc and i < 60 degrees is 0.4 - 2.3 SNe per 100 years per 10^10 solar masses and 0.7 - 2.1 SNe per 100 years per solar mass per year, which is in line with the observed rate for the Milky Way.NASA ADAP grant NNX16AF48GCollege of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research ScholarshipNo embargoAcademic Major: Astronomy and Astrophysic