INTENSIVE SUPERNOVAE SEARCHES

In the coming years, a number of projects will start intensive supernov esearches resulting in an increase of the current statistics by a factor of 10. At low redshift, the Nearby Supernova Factory will detect and follow spectrophotometricly ~ 400 of SNe Ia with a redshift at z ~ 0.05, and improve our understanding of the intrinsic properties of SNe Ia. At high redshift, the large imager Megacam at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope running in a survey mode, will make it possible to detect and follow a large amount of high redshift supernovae. Using Megacam during 5 years ~ 1000 Type Ia SNe will be detected, at z ranging from 0.3 to 1.2, and ~ 700 will be used for measuring the cosmological parameters via the Hubble diagram. They will provide a measurement of the cosmic equation of state parameter w. A first test run search was done last spring at the CFHT, using the current imager: the ‘CFH 12k’. Detection procedure and preliminary results are presented in this article.