The Nearby Supernova Factory

Greg Aldering
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

The Nearby Supernova Factory is a new project designed todiscover 
and follow-up several hundred nearby Type Ia supernovae in the
Hubble flow. The project is motivated by the evidence from
high-redshift supernovae that the expansion of the universe is
accelerating. The sample of nearby Type Ia supernovae which serve as
calibration, and anchor these results, is small, and has a number of
potential systematic problems which make it inadequate to support
future high-redshift supernova programs now being planned (to be
described in the afternoon colloquium by Saul Perlmutter).  The science,
instrumentation, and operations of the Nearby Supernova Factory will be
described, including a proposal to place an automated dual-channel
integral-field-unit optical spectrograph (SNIFS) at a bent-Cassegrain
focus of the UH 2.2m telescope. Those interested in either the science 
or the instrument are encouraged to attend and join in the discussion.