Berger, EdoGomez, Sebastian2021-07-1320212021-05-122021-05Gomez, Sebastian. 2021. Exotic Transients and How to Find Them. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.28498478https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37368353Modern 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 massesapplication/pdfenastrophysical transientscompact objectsmachine learningsupernovaetransient surveysAstronomyAstrophysicsThesis or Dissertation2021-07-130000-0001-6395-6702