Unveiling the progenitors of supernovae and other cosmic explosions with AMUSING at the VLT — Thallis Pessi (European Southern Observatory)

The All-weather MUse Supernova Integral field Nearby Galaxies (AMUSING) survey is a successful programme that has observed more than 700 host galaxies of transient events (mostly supernovae – SNe) using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). In this talk, I will present the main goals, capabilities, and recent discoveries of the survey that has been operating since 2016, and has performed > 1 200 h of observations under non-ideal weather conditions at the VLT. The large sample observed under sub-optimal observing conditions, combined with the cutting-edge integral-field spectroscopy mode of MUSE, has allowed us to produce very detailed and statistically significant analyses of the environments of diverse cosmic explosions. Recently, we analyzed 113 galaxies that hosted core-collapse SNe and found that stripped-envelope SNe occur in environments with higher values of metallicity than SNe II, strengthening the binary scenario for the former. We have also estimated the occurrence of CCSN as a function of metallicity and found a strong decrease as metallicity increases, which might reveal a strong metallicity dependence on the explodability of massive stars. Finally, I will discuss the findings of AMUSING on Type Ia SNe, fast blue optical transients (FBOTs), and tidal disruption events (TDEs).

Horarios: 17 Mar 2026

Publicado por: Gijs Mulders