SN 2002cv: A Heavily Obscured Type Ia Supernova

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed photometric and spectroscopic observations of the heavily obscured Type Ia supernova SN 2002cv, revealing its intrinsic properties despite significant extinction and indicating different dust characteristics in its host galaxy.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of SN 2002cv's light curves and spectra, demonstrating the effects of heavy extinction and varying dust properties in its host galaxy.

Findings

SN 2002cv has a total visual extinction of 8.74 mag.

The peak I-band magnitude is 16.57 mag.

The dust along the line of sight has a small Rv value of 1.59.

Abstract

We present VRIJHK photometry, and optical and near-infrared spectroscopy, of the heavily extinguished Type Ia supernova (SN) 2002cv, located in NGC 3190, which is also the parent galaxy of the Type Ia SN 2002bo. SN 2002cv, not visible in the blue, has a total visual extinction of 8.74 +- 0.21 mag. In spite of this we were able to obtain the light curves between -10 and +207 days from the maximum in the I band, and also to follow the spectral evolution, deriving its key parameters. We found the peak I-band brightness to be Imax = 16.57 +- 0.10 mag, the maximum absolute I magnitude to be MmaxI = -18.79 +- 0.20, and the parameter dm15(B) specifying the width of the B-band light curve to be 1.46 +- 0.17 mag. The latter was derived using the relations between this parameter and dm40(I) and the time interval dtmax(I) between the two maxima in the I-band light curve. As has been found for previously observed, highly extinguished SNe Ia, a small value of 1.59 +- 0.07 was obtained here for the ratio Rv of the total-to-selective extinction ratio for SN 2002cv, which implies a small mean size for the grains along the line of sight toward us. Since it was found for SN 2002bo a canonical value of 3.1, here we present a clear evidence of different dust properties inside NGC 3190.