Strip Searching for Supernovae

Abstract

The survey of a strip of sky carried out with a zenith-observing 4-m liquid mirror can discover and observe several thousand supernovae/year to z = 1, making it quite competitive with other proposed surveys. Because LMs are inexpensive, and easy to build, a SNeIa survey can begin rapidly. As documented in the published literature, the present technology, and its cost, has been proven in both the laboratory and in observatory settings and is ready, at a very modest cost, for a 4-m class telescope. As a bonus, the coadded data would survey 150 square degrees of sky to magnitudes > 27, as deep as the deepest optical surveys but in a far larger area of sky. There presently is a window of opportunity to make fundamental discoveries by exploiting the cost advantage of this powerful novel technology.