- Contreras, C
- Phillips, MM
- Burns, CR
- Piro, AL
- Shappee, BJ
- Stritzinger, MD
- Baltay, C
- Brown, PJ
- Conseil, E
- Klotz, A
- Nugent, PE
- Turpin, D
- Parker, S
- Rabinowitz, D
- Hsiao, EY
- Morrell, N
- Campillay, A
- Castellón, S
- Corco, C
- González, C
- Krisciunas, K
- Serón, J
- Tucker, BE
- Walker, ES
- Baron, E
- Cain, C
- Childress, MJ
- Folatelli, G
- Freedman, WL
- Hamuy, M
- Hoeflich, P
- Persson, SE
- Scalzo, R
- Schmidt, B
- Suntzeff, NB
- et al.
© 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.. We present detailed ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared light curves of the Type Ia supernova (SN) 2012fr, which exploded in the Fornax cluster member NGC 1365. These precise high-cadence light curves provide a dense coverage of the flux evolution from -12 to +140 days with respect to the epoch of B-band maximum (). Supplementary imaging at the earliest epochs reveals an initial slow and nearly linear rise in luminosity with a duration of ∼2.5 days, followed by a faster rising phase that is well reproduced by an explosion model with a moderate amount of 56Ni mixing in the ejecta. From our analysis of the light curves, we conclude that: (i) the explosion occurred <22 hr before the first detection of the supernova, (ii) the rise time to peak bolometric (λ > 1800) luminosity was 16.5 ±0.6 days, (iii) the supernova suffered little or no host-galaxy dust reddening, (iv) the peak luminosity in both the optical and near-infrared was consistent with the bright end of normal Type Ia diversity, and (v) 0.60 ±0.15 M o of 56Ni was synthesized in the explosion. Despite its normal luminosity, SN 2012fr displayed unusually prevalent high-velocity Ca ii and Si ii absorption features, and a nearly constant photospheric velocity of the Si ii λ6355 line at ∼12,000 that began ∼5 days before . We also highlight some of the other peculiarities in the early phase photometry and the spectral evolution. SN 2012fr also adds to a growing number of Type Ia supernovae that are hosted by galaxies with direct Cepheid distance measurements.