This is one of the three computational astrophysics laboratories that I have worked on during my 3rd year of Physics and Astrophysics at Trinity College Dublin. This laboratory was focused on Type Ia Supernovae.
The peak wavelengths of seven Type Ia supernovae were identified for various emission lines of different elements by plotting best-fit Gaussians to then calculate the redshifts. Later, the maximum apparent magnitude was found for each supernova’s light curve. The luminosity-decline rate relation was plotted to later produce both uncorrected and corrected Hubble diagrams to investigate the effect of adding the correction. Finally, the more modern JLA data sample was used to evaluate the advances made since the first Hubble diagrams were plotted. Three different models of the universe were compared by plotting a Hubble diagram and a plot of their residual uncertainties. The aim was to find which model composition of the universe matched the data.