Exotic Transients and How to Find Them

Abstract

Modern telescope surveys are finding thousands of astronomical transients every month, and thanks to their untargeted nature we have been able to discover a wide array of new classes of transients. Among these transients are: superluminous supernovae (SLSNe), which can be up to 100 times brighter than a normal supernova (SN); tidal disruption events (TDEs), the bright flares produced when a star gets torn apart by a black hole; pair- instability SNe (PISNe), the SNe thought to be produced by the most massive stars; and kilonovae, which result from the merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. These transients are rare, meaning there are many aspects of their nature we still do not understand.

In this thesis, I present an analysis of a few of these transients. First SN 2016iet, a SN that showed a number of peculiar features: a double-peaked light curve still visible more than 700 days after explosion, a very isolated environment, and an inferred progenitor mass of more than 55 solar masses