Hubble Higher z Supernova Search, HHZSS

In cooperation with the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, we have used the Hubble Space Telescope with the Advanced Camera for Surveys to cover ~300arcmin^2^ in the area of the Chandra Deep Field South and the Hubble Deep Field North on five separate search epochs (separated by ~45day intervals) to a limiting magnitude of F850LP~26.

These deep observations have allowed us to discover 42 SNe in the redshift range 0.2<z<1.6. As these data span a large range in redshift, they are ideal for testing the validity of Type Ia supernova progenitor models with the distribution of expected "delay times" from progenitor star formation to Type Ia SN explosion, and the SN rates these models predict. Through a Bayesian maximum likelihood test, we determine which delay-time models best reproduce the redshift distribution of SNe Ia discovered in this survey.