High-z Supernova Search Team

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The High-z Supernova Search Team was an international cosmology collaboration which used Type Ia Supernovae to chart the expansion of the Universe. The team was formed in 1994 by Brian P. Schmidt, then a post-doctoral research associate at Harvard University, and Nicholas B. Suntzeff, a staff astronomer at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The team expanded to roughly 20 astronomers located in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Chile. They used the 4m Blanco telescope of CTIO to discover Type Ia supernovae out to redshifts of z=0.9. The discoveries were verified with spectra taken mostly from the telescopes of the Keck Observatory, and the European Southern Observatory.

In a 1998 study led by Adam Riess, the High-z Team became the first to publish evidence that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating (Riess et al. 1998, AJ, 116, 1009, submitted March 13, 1998, accepted May 1998). The team was managed by Brian P. Schmidt of the Mount Stromlo Observatory, which is part of the Australian National University. The team later spawned Project ESSENCE led by Christopher Stubbs of Harvard University and the Higher-z Team led by Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute.