We present optical photometry and spectrosopy of the transient SN 2011A. Our data spans 140 days after discovery including BVRIu'g'r'i'z' photometry and a sequence of 11 spectra. First classified as a type IIn supernova due to the presence of narrow Hα emission, this object shows exceptional characteristics. Firstly, the light curve shows a double plateau; a property only before observed in the impostor object SN 1997bs. Secondly SN 2011A has a very low luminosity for a type IIn supernova placing it between the type IIn supernovae and impostor classes in terms of luminosity. Thirdly, SN 2011A shows low velocity and high equivalent width sodium doublet absorption which increases with time and is most likely of circumstellar origin. This evolution is also accompanied by a change of line profile. When the absorption becomes stronger, a P-Cygni profile appears.

We present spectroscopic analysis of 63 type II supernovae. We present preliminary results on correlations between spectroscopic and photometric properties, focusing on light-curve decline rates, absolute magnitudes and Hα lines profiles. We found the ratio of absorption to emission of Hα P-Cygni profile as the dominant measured parameter as it has the highest median correlation with all other parameters.

We present three studies that use supernova (SN) environments within host galaxies (HGs) to constrain SNe properties. These studies are ordered from an indirect approximation to a direct determination of the environmental parameters of the SN. We find correlations between the galactocentric distance and several parameters measured from both the SN light-curve (LC) and the host galaxy spectroscopy. We are able to recover and strength previous results pointing to a sequence on the progenitor mass of different SN types. We also confirm no significant difference in the elemental abundances of the environment where different SN types exploded, measured with a more powerful technique such as Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS).

We present survey results obtained from the UBVRI optical photometric follow-up of 19 bright core-collapse SNe during 2002-2012 using 1-m class optical telescopes operated by the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Science (acronym ARIES), Nainital India. This homogeneous set of data have been used to study behavior of optical light/color curve, and to gain insight into objet-to-object peculiarity. We derive integrated luminosities for types IIP, Ibc and luminous SNe. Two peculiar type IIP events having photometric properties similar to normal IIP and spectroscopic properties similar to sub-lumnious IIP have been identified.

Optical afterglow observations hold the indirect key to type-Ic Supernovae associated with Gamma Ray Bursts. In several cases where there is no spectroscopic confirmation available, presence of the supernova is inferred from the red bump seen in late afterglow light-curves. We do extensive afterglow modeling to extract the supernova contribution as residue. We compare the residual lightcurves of Supernovae associated with GRB041006, GRB030329, GRB050525A and GRB090618.

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are found at much higher redshifts (z > 6) than Supernova Ia (z ~ 1), and hence, they can be used to probe very primitive universe. However, radiation mechanism of GRB remains a puzzle, unlike Supernova Ia. Through comprehensive description, both empirical and physical, we shall discuss the most likely way to use the constituent pulses of a GRB to find the radiation mechanism as well as using the pulses as luminosity indicators.

Tycho is one of nearly a dozen Galactic supernova remnants which are suggested to emit hadronic γ-ray emission. Among them, however, it is the only one in which the hadronic emission is proposed to arise from the interaction with low-density ambient medium. Based on the multi-band observations, we suggest that Tycho is encountering dense cloud at the northeastern boundary. The γ-ray emissions can be explained by hadronic process with self-consistent parameters, such as a modest energy conversion efficiency. In this SNR-cloud association scenario, the distance can be estimated as ~2.5 kpc.

We perform an XMM-Newton study of the mixed-morphology supernova remnant (MMSNR) W28. The X-ray spectrum arising from the northeastern shell consists of a thermal component plus a non-thermal power-law component with a hard photon index (~1.5). Non-thermal bremsstrahlung is the most favourible origin of the hard X-ray emission. The gas in the SNR interior is centrally peaked and best described by a two-temperature thermal model. We found a non-uniform absorption column density and temperature profile for the central gas, indicating that the remnant is evolving in a non-uniform environment with denser material in the east. We argue that the cloudlet evaporation is an indispensable process to explain both the spectral properties and the clumpiness in the X-ray emission.

During the last few years, overionized (recombining) plasmas were unexpectedly discovered in a few supernova remnants, but the origin is still unclear. In this contribution, we present a preliminary spectroscopic analysis of the X-ray emission from the north central region of IC443, one of the “recombining” remnants. An overionized NEI plasma model can reproduce well the Ly-alpha lines and the recombination edges in the spectrum. The ionization temperatures for the metals Mg, Si and S are much higher than the electron temperatures. which is a strong indication of overionization of these elements. The different spectral features of the recombining plasma are characterized on scales of a few arcmin, such as the increasing trend of the pre-cooling temperature and the ionization time from south to north, which may imply a pre-heating direction.

W49B is a mixed-morphology supernova remnant (SNR) with the presence of enhanced abundances and overionization confirmed by X-ray observation. For the overionization, a strong radiative recombination continuum (RRC) has been detected and confirmed by SUZAKU and XMM-Newton. Here, we investigate these intriguing observational results through a multidimensional hydrodynamic model that takes into account, for the first time, the mixing of ejecta with the circumstellar and interstellar medium, thermal conduction, and non-equilibrium ionization. The model can reproduce the morphology and the overionization pattern of W49B. We found that the overionized plasma originates from the rapid cooling of the hot plasma originally heated by the shock reflected from the dense ring-like cloud. In addition, based on the most updated ATOMDB (v2.0.2), we calculated the spectrum of one cell in the overionized region from the simulation results at present. We got the overionized spectrum that is in agreement with the observational results. Thus, our primary result indicates that the model is consistent with the observations both spatially and spectrally.

We report here on the first dedicated simultaneous imaging and pulsar observations towards the supernova remnant (SNR) G15.4+0.1, the possible counterpart of the very high energy (VHE) source HESS J1818–154. The observations were carried out using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) at 610 and 1400 MHz. Preliminary analysis of data suggests absence of pulsations towards the centroid of HESS J1818–154, with upper limits of 0.6 and 0.3 mJy at 610 and 1400 MHz, respectively. Analysis of data with a larger beam is in progress, which may confirm the presence of a putative pulsar and its wind nebula if it is offset from the centroid of HESS J1818–154.

We present the results of near-infrared (NIR) imaging and spectroscopic observations of the Galactic supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). Applying the method of Principal Component Analysis to our broadband NIR spectra, we identify a total of 61 NIR emission knots of Cas A and classify them into three groups of distinct spectral characteristics: Helium-rich, Sulfur-rich, and Iron-rich groups. The first and second groups are of the circumstellar and supernova ejecta origin, respectively. The third group, which has enhanced iron emission, is of particular interests since it shows intermediate characteristics between the former two groups. We suggest that the Iron-rich group is knots of swept-up circumstellar medium around the contact discontinuity in Cas A and/or supernova ejecta from deep layers of its progenitor star which have recently encountered a reverse shock in the remnant.

We report the preliminary results for the detection of H2 and [Fe II] line features around the Galactic supernova remnants (SNRs) from the UWISH2 and UWIFE surveys that cover the first galactic quadrant of 7°<l<65° and |b|<1.3°. By this time, we have found a total of 17 H2-emitting and 14 [Fe II]-emitting SNRs in the coverage, and more than a half of them are detected in both H2 and [Fe II] emissions, which implies that the environment of these SNRs might be complex and composed of multi-phase medium. In this paper, we present our identification strategy and some preliminary results including H2 and [Fe II] luminosity distributions.

We extracted the neutral hydrogen absorption spectra of supernova remnants W44 (G34.7-0.4) and 3C 391 (G31.9+0.0) from the VLA Galactic Plane Survey data. The revised distance of W41 is about 3.3 kpc replacing the previous 3.0 kpc. Further, we confined the distance of G31.9+0.0 to about 7.2 kpc due to its interaction with its surrounding molecular clouds.

We study several TeV Supernova Remnants (SNRs W51C, CTB 37A, CTB 37B and G353.6-0.7) by radio and X-ray observations. We utilize neutral hydrogen (\HI) 21 cm line data to measure their kinematic distances, and use the CO line survey sensitive to molecular hydrogen clouds to validate these distance measurements and understand their relation to the TeV SNRs. Our study show that the TeV γ-ray emission from W51C should not be associated with the high-velocity HI clouds; CTB 37A and CTB 37B are at different distances and are only by chance nearby each other on the sky; the extended TeV emission from G353.6-0.7 possibly originates from the interaction between the SNR shock and the adjacent CO clouds.

IC443 is a relatively large Galactic (≈45 arcmin) SNR with a high radio surface brightness. It has fine scale structure down to arcsec scales, and so is difficult to image on all angular scales with a single instrument. Here observations of IC443 at 151 MHz made with both the GMRT and the CLFST are combined to give a composite image of IC443 on all scales from >45 arcmin down to ≈20 arcsec.

Supernova remnants (SNRs) play a key role in understanding supernovae explosion mechanisms, exploring the likely sources of Galactic cosmic rays and the chemical enrichment of interstellar medium (ISM). Reliable distance determinations to Galactic SNRs are key to obtain their basic parameters, such as size, age, explosion energy, which helps us to study their environment and interstellar medium. We review the methods to determine the distances to SNRs and highlight the kinematic distance measurement by Hi absorption and CO emission observations.

We have analyzed Chandra X-ray data from different parts of the shell of young supernova remnant (SNR) in the energy range of 0.7 - 8 keV. We observed that X-ray flux level varies over different shell regions of the source. Implications of X-ray observation will be discussed here. We also analyzed Fermi-LAT data in the energy range 0.5 - 50 GeV for the source. The differential spectrum obtained in this way fits with simple power-law. We also present here multi-wavelength modeling of the source considering archival radio and TeV data along with Chandra and Fermi-LAT data.

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) models of the recurrent nova RS Ophiuchi are presented, along with simple models for circumstellar absorption lines. The evolution of the model sodium line is similar to the behaviour in some Type Ia SNe, e.g. SN2006X.

Studying the environments in which core-collapse supernovae (SNe) explode and then subsequently evolve is essential to establish the nature of the mass loss and the explosion of the progenitor star. The spatial structure of the outer shock in young core-collapse SNRs provides an opportunity to study the nature of the medium into which the remnant has been expanding. We present our X-ray study of the outer shocks in young core-collapse SNRs in our Galaxy. For Cas A and G292.0+1.8, we find that both remnants have been likely interacting with dense red supergiant winds. For other remnants with bright thermal X-ray emission from the shell, we suggest that they are interacting with pre-existing circumstellar structure. We discuss the nature of the winds and the progenitor stars.