Witnessing History: Rates and Detectability of Naked-Eye Milky-Way Supernovae

TL;DR

This paper models the distribution and detectability of Milky Way supernovae, revealing discrepancies with historical records and estimating intrinsic supernova rates, while emphasizing the role of dust and observational limits.

Contribution

It develops a formalism for supernova probability considering dust and flux limits, and compares model predictions with historical supernova observations, highlighting detection biases.

Findings

Predicted supernova sky distribution conflicts with historical records.

Approximately 13% of core-collapse and 33% of Type Ia supernovae are bright enough for discovery.

Estimated Galactic supernova rates align with other methods.

Abstract

The Milky Way hosts on average a few supernova explosions per century, yet in the past millennium only five supernovae have been identified confidently in the historical record. This deficit of naked-eye supernovae is at least partly due to dust extinction in the Galactic plane. We explore this effect quantitatively, developing a formalism for the supernova probability distribution, accounting for dust and for the observer's flux limit. We then construct a fiducial axisymmetric model for the supernova and dust densities, featuring an exponential dependence on galactocentric radius and height, with core-collapse events in a thin disk and Type Ia events including a thick disk component. When no flux limit is applied, our model predicts supernovae are intrinsically concentrated in the Galactic plane, with Type Ia events extending to higher latitudes reflecting their thick disk component. We then apply a flux limit and include dust effects, to predict the sky distribution of historical supernovae. We use well-observed supernovae as light-curve templates, and introduce naked-eye discovery criteria. The resulting sky distributions are strikingly inconsistent with the locations of confident historical supernovae, none of which lie near our model's central peaks. Indeed, SN 1054 lies off the plane almost exactly in the anticenter, and SN 1181 is in the 2nd Galactic quadrant. We discuss possible explanations for these discrepancies. We calculate the percentage of all supernovae bright enough for historical discovery: $\simeq 13\%$ of core-collapse and $\simeq 33\%$ of Type Ia events. Using these and the confident historical supernovae, we estimate the intrinsic Galactic supernova rates, finding general agreement with other methods. Finally, we urge searches for supernovae in historical records from civilizations in the southern hemisphere.