Description:

Presenter: Adam Miller, Northwestern University
Website: https://www.amillerastro.com/

Host: Vicky Kalogera, Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor, CIERA Director

In this talk I will discuss open questions in our quest to develop a map between progenitor systems and supernova explosions. This quest remains a frontier area in astrophysics that requires the most powerful telescopes in the world. Solving the puzzle has important ramifications for understanding the chemical enrichment of the Universe and galactic evolution and feedback. I will highlight Type Ia supernovae and discuss an exquisite set of new observations obtained by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). I will also discuss the future of this field, which will rely heavily on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). With a discovery rate of nearly ~1 million transients per year, LSST will produce several new challenges in the next decade, some of which will be solved by machine learning and others by thirty-meter class telescopes.