Title:  Exploding Stars, Near and Far 

Saurabh Jha
U.C. Berkeley 


Abstract:
 
Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) have proven to be excellent tools for
cosmology, providing precise distances to nearby galaxies as well as
galaxies halfway across the Universe. I present results from my Ph.D.
thesis and the ongoing study of SN Ia, including observations of SN 1998bu
in M96 (the only SN Ia yet discovered in a galaxy whose Cepheid distance
was already measured by HST), as well as UBVRI light curves of 44 other
recent SN Ia, nearly doubling the sample of well-observed, nearby SN Ia.
Together with an also doubled sample of SN Ia in galaxies with HST Cepheid
distances, and an updated method to determine SN Ia distances from
multicolor light curves, this sample leads to the best estimate of the
Hubble Constant from SN Ia to date. The large, homogeneous collection of U
band data is unique, and will play an important role in applications of SN
Ia at high redshift.