9 high-redshift ESSENCE supernovae

The supernovae were discovered as part of the ESSENCE project, and the light curves are a combination of Cerro Tololo 4m and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry. On the basis of spectra and/or light-curve fitting, eight of these objects are definitely Type Ia supernovae, while the classification of one is problematic.

The ESSENCE project is a 5yr endeavor to discover about 200 high-redshift Type Ia supernovae, with the goal of tightly constraining the time average of the equation-of-state parameter [w=p/({rho}c^2^)] of the "dark energy." To help minimize our systematic errors, all of our ground-based photometry is obtained with the same telescope and instrument. In 2003 the highest redshift subset of ESSENCE supernovae was selected for detailed study with HST.