Presentation 1 : Short Talk
Highly extinguished SNe in the nuclear regions of starburst galaxies
Mattila S., Meikle W.P.S.
A handful of nearby SNe with visual extinctions of a few magnitudes
have been recently discovered. However, an undiscovered population of much
more highly extinguished (Av > 10) core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) is
likely to exist in the nuclear (central kpc) regions of starburst galaxies.
The high dust extinction means that optical searches for such SNe are unlikely
to be successful. Here, I discuss the feasibility of using near-infrared
observations to discover nuclear SNe. I give a quick review on the past,
present and future infrared SN searches, and finally present some preliminary
results from our ongoing K-bands search programme with the William Herschel
Telescope.