A First Amendment Right to Observe Elections: Fulfilling the Dream of \u3ci\u3eRichmond Newspapers\u3c/i\u3e by Extending It to the Polling Place

The First Amendment has long been held to protect the right of citizens to gather information. In 1980, the Supreme Court articulated a two-pronged test in Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia, which examined both the “experience” and “logic” of granting public access to criminal trials. The jurisprudence of lower courts has since extended this qualified First Amendment presumptive right of access to civil trial and administrative hearings. This Comment examines the extension of this constitutional test to the governmental process at work at polling places. This Comment argues that the public, via the powerful vehicle of the press, ultimately meets the “experience and logic” test and possesses a qualified First Amendment right of access to the polling place. Finally, this Comment notes that a constitutional presumption of access need not infringe upon the individual rights of voters

Predicted and observed evolution in the mean properties of Type Ia supernovae with redshift

Recent studies indicate that Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) consist of two groups - a "prompt" component whose rates are proportional to the host galaxy star formation rate, whose members have broader lightcurves and are intrinsically more luminous, and a "delayed" component whose members take several Gyr to explode, have narrower lightcurves, and are intrinsically fainter. As cosmic star formation density increases with redshift, the prompt component should begin to dominate. We use a two-component model to predict that the average lightcurve width should increase by 6% from z=0-1.5. Using data from various searches we find an 8.1% +/- 2.7% increase in average lightcurve width for non-subluminous SNe Ia from z=0.03 - 1.12, corresponding to an increase in the average intrinsic luminosity of 12%. To test whether there is any bias after supernovae are corrected for lightcurve shape we use published data to mimic the effect of population evolution and find no significant difference in the measured dark energy equation of state parameter, w. However, future measurements of time-variable w will require standardization of SN Ia magnitudes to 2% up to z=1.7, and it is not yet possible to assess whether lightcurve shape correction works at this level of precision. Another concern at z=1.5 is the expected order of magnitude increase in the number of SNe Ia that cannot be calibrated by current methods.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted to ApJ Letters, addressed referee's comments, table adde

Needle in a Haystack: Finding Supermassive Black Hole-Related Flares in the Zwicky Transient Facility Public Survey

Transient accretion events onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), such as tidal disruption events (TDEs), Bowen Fluorescence Flares (BFFs), and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), which are accompanied by sudden increases of activity, offer a new window onto the SMBH population, accretion physics, and stellar dynamics in galaxy centers. However, such transients are rare and finding them in wide-field transient surveys is challenging. Here we present the results of a systematic real-time search for SMBH-related transients in Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) public alerts, using various search queries. We examined 345 rising events coincident with a galaxy nucleus, with no history of previous activity, of which 223 were spectroscopically classified. Of those, five (2.2%) were TDEs, one (0.5%) was a BFF, and two (0.9%) were AGN flares. Limiting the search to blue events, the fraction of TDEs nearly doubles to 4.1%, and no TDEs are missed. Limiting the search further to candidate post-starburst galaxies increases the relative number of TDEs to 16.7%, but the absolute numbers in such a search are small. The main contamination source is supernovae (95.1% of classified events), of which the majority (82.2% of supernovae) are of Type Ia. In a comparison set of 39 events with limited photometric history, the AGN contamination increases to ~30%. Host galaxy offset is not a significant discriminant of TDEs in current ZTF data, but might be useful in higher-resolution data. Our results can be used to quantify the efficiency of various SMBH-related transient search strategies in optical surveys such as ZTF and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.Comment: Accepted to Ap

SN Hunt 248: a super-Eddington outburst from a massive cool hypergiant

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of SN Hunt 248, a new supernova (SN) impostor in NGC 5806, which began a multi-stage outburst in 2014 May. The initial '2014a' discovery brightening exhibited an absolute magnitude of M~-12 and the spectral characteristics of a cool dense outflow, including P-Cygni lines of Fe II, H I, Na I, and strong line blanketing from metals. The source rapidly climbed and peaked near M~-15 mag after two additional weeks. During this bright '2014b' phase the spectrum became dominated by Balmer emission and a stronger blue continuum, similar to the SN impostor SN 1997bs. Archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope between 1997 and 2005 reveal a luminous (4e5 Lsun) variable precursor star. Its location on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is consistent with a massive (M_init~30 Msun) cool hypergiant having an extremely dense wind and an Eddington ratio just below unity. At the onset of the recent 2014a brightening, however, the object became super-Eddington. The subsequent boost in luminosity during the 2014b phase probably resulted from circumstellar interaction. SN Hunt 248 provides the first case of a cool hypergiant undergoing a giant eruption reminiscent of outbursts from luminous blue variable (LBV) stars. This lends support to the hypothesis that some cool hypergiants, such as Rho Cas, could be LBVs masquerading under a pseudo-photosphere created by their extremely dense winds. Moreover, SN Hunt 248 demonstrates that eruptions stemming from such stars can rival in peak luminosity the giant outbursts of much more massive systems like Eta Car.Comment: Accepted to MNRAS on 2014 Dec 1. Post-proof version. 14 pages, 9 figure