The ASAS-SN Bright Supernova Catalog $-$ I. 2013$-$2014

TL;DR

This paper compiles a comprehensive catalog of bright supernovae discovered by ASAS-SN in 2013-2014 and compares it with other sources, highlighting ASAS-SN's unique ability to find supernovae near galaxy centers despite lower resolution.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic comparison of ASAS-SN supernovae with other surveys, emphasizing its effectiveness in detecting supernovae close to galaxy centers.

Findings

ASAS-SN finds more supernovae near galaxy centers.

The catalog includes redshifts and magnitudes for host galaxies.

ASAS-SN's all-sky approach reduces previous observational biases.

Abstract

We present basic statistics for all supernovae discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) during its first year-and-a-half of operations, spanning 2013 and 2014. We also present the same information for all other bright ($m_V\leq17$), spectroscopically confirmed supernovae discovered from 2014 May 1 through the end of 2014, providing a comparison to the ASAS-SN sample starting from the point where ASAS-SN became operational in both hemispheres. In addition, we present collected redshifts and near-UV through IR magnitudes, where available, for all host galaxies of the bright supernovae in both samples. This work represents a comprehensive catalog of bright supernovae and their hosts from multiple professional and amateur sources, allowing for population studies that were not previously possible because the all-sky emphasis of ASAS-SN redresses many previously existing biases. In particular, ASAS-SN systematically finds bright supernovae closer to the centers of host galaxies than either other professional surveys or amateurs, a remarkable result given ASAS-SN's poorer angular resolution. This is the first of a series of yearly papers on bright supernovae and their hosts that will be released by the ASAS-SN team.