Intensive Monitoring Survey of Nearby Galaxies (IMSNG)
  Intensive Monitoring Survey of Nearby Galaxies (IMSNG) is a high cadence
observation program monitoring nearby galaxies with high probabilities of
hosting supernovae (SNe). IMSNG aims to constrain the SN explosion mechanism by
inferring sizes of SN progenitor systems through the detection of the
shock-heated emission that lasts less than a few days after the SN explosion.
To catch the signal, IMSNG utilizes a network of 0.5-m to 1-m class telescopes
around the world and monitors the images of 60 nearby galaxies at distances D <
50 Mpc to a cadence as short as a few hours. The target galaxies are bright in
near-ultraviolet (NUV) with M_NUV < -18.4 AB mag and have high probabilities of
hosting SNe (0.06 SN/yr per galaxy). With this strategy, we expect to detect
the early light curves of 3.4 SNe per year to a depth of R ~ 19.5 mag, enabling
us to detect the shock-heated emission from a progenitor star with a radius as
small as 0.1 R_sun. The accumulated data will be also useful for studying faint
features around the target galaxies and other science projects. So far, 18 SNe
have occurred in our target fields (16 in IMSNG galaxies) over 5 years,
confirming our SN rate estimate of 0.06 SN/yr per galaxy.
