juliensimon/open-supernova-catalog

Open Supernova Catalog

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

All known supernovae and supernova candidates from the Open Supernova Catalog, spanning discoveries from the earliest historical records to the modern survey era.

The Open Supernova Catalog (OSC) is a comprehensive, community-maintained database aggregating data from professional surveys (ZTF, ASAS-SN, Pan-STARRS, SDSS), amateur discoveries, and historical records. Each record includes sky coordinates, spectroscopic classification, redshift, host galaxy, peak apparent magnitude, and extinction E(B-V).

Supernovae are among the most energetic events in the universe, releasing roughly 10^44 joules of kinetic energy and briefly outshining their entire host galaxy. They divide into two fundamental classes: thermonuclear supernovae (Type Ia), in which a carbon-oxygen white dwarf is disrupted by runaway nuclear burning, and core-collapse supernovae (Types II, Ib, Ic), in which the iron core of a massive star (>8 solar masses) collapses to form a neutron star or black hole. Type Ia supernovae serve as standardizable candles for measuring cosmological distances, providing the original evidence for dark energy.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification, tabular regression tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
name	str	Primary supernova designation (e.g., 'SN 1987A', 'SN2011fe', 'AT2023bee'); historical SNe use 'SN YYYY' format; modern transients use 'AT' prefix until spectroscopically confirmed	AT1991bm	0.0%
ra_hms	str	Right ascension in sexagesimal format (HH:MM:SS.ss); for high-z events this is the host galaxy nucleus position	18:15:14.404	5.2%
dec_dms	str	Declination in sexagesimal format (+DD:MM:SS.ss)	+47:31:51.55	5.2%
ra	float64	Right ascension in decimal degrees (J2000.0 ICRS, 0-360); null for historical events without precise coordinates	273.810017	5.5%
dec	float64	Declination in decimal degrees (J2000.0 ICRS, -90 to +90); null when ra is null	47.530986	6.5%
redshift	float64	Spectroscopic or photometric redshift of the host galaxy; range ~0.0001 (SN 1987A) to ~2 (cosmological); null for ~50% of catalog entries	0.040188	59.7%
claimed_type	str	Spectroscopic classification: 'Ia' (thermonuclear WD detonation), 'Ib' (stripped-envelope, no H, has He), 'Ic' (stripped-envelope, no H or He), 'II' (core collapse with H), 'IIn' (with circumstellar interaction), 'IIb' (transitional), 'SLSN-I/II' (superluminous); null for unclassified candidates	Candidate	20.8%
host_galaxy	str	Name of the host galaxy; null for ~20% of entries	UGC 11180	72.3%
peak_mag	float64	Peak apparent magnitude (filter unspecified); nearby bright SNe can reach mag ~8-10; typical survey-detected: 18-22 mag; null for ~60% of entries	14.0	16.5%
peak_abs_mag	float64	Peak absolute magnitude; Type Ia: ~-19.3; core-collapse: -15 to -18; SLSN: -20 to -23; null when redshift or peak apparent magnitude is unavailable	-22.2727	66.3%
discovery_date	datetime64[us]	UTC date the transient was first reported; format YYYY-MM-DD	1991-08-06 00:00:00	9.9%
luminosity_distance_mpc	float64	Luminosity distance in megaparsecs computed from redshift; null when redshift is unavailable	183.269	59.7%
ebv	float64	Milky Way line-of-sight dust reddening E(B-V) in magnitudes from Schlegel/Schlafly dust maps; used to correct observed magnitudes for Galactic extinction	0.092	48.5%
discoverer	str	Person, team, or survey that first reported the transient (e.g., 'ZTF', 'ASAS-SN', 'Itagaki'); null for many historical entries	Filipp Romanov	24.8%
discovery_year	Int64	Year of discovery derived from discovery_date; null when discovery_date is unavailable	1991	9.9%

Quick stats

• 72,145 supernovae (1006--2020)
• 68,173 with sky coordinates
• 29,068 with redshift measurements
• 57,130 with spectroscopic classification
• 19,998 with identified host galaxy

Top classifications

Type	Count
Candidate	31,623
Ia	13,805
II	5,275
LGRB	2,402
II P	537
Ic	464
IIn	447
Ib	317
Ia?	222
IIb	222

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/open-supernova-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/open-supernova-catalog", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Type Ia supernovae with redshift
ia = df[(df["claimed_type"] == "Ia") & df["redshift"].notna()]

# Nearby supernovae (z < 0.01)
nearby = df[df["redshift"] < 0.01].sort_values("redshift")

# Discoveries per year
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
per_year = df["discovery_year"].dropna().value_counts().sort_index()
per_year.plot()
plt.xlabel("Year")
plt.ylabel("Discoveries")
plt.title("Supernova Discoveries per Year")
plt.show()

Data source

https://github.com/astrocatalogs/supernovae

Related datasets

• juliensimon/pantheon-plus-sne-ia

• juliensimon/supernova-remnants

• juliensimon/gamma-ray-bursts

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{open_supernova_catalog,
  title = {Open Supernova Catalog},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/open-supernova-catalog},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0