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This paper presents a nearly complete census of 1,729 supernovae and transients within 100 Mpc, built from 5.75 years of ATLAS survey data, and argues that above absolute magnitude −16 the sample is complete and pure enough to anchor demogr

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ATLAS100 is a volume-limited, publicly released catalog of 1,729 supernovae and transients within ~100 Mpc, with 87% spectroscopic classification and 83% host-redshift completeness.

T0 review reviewed 2026-08-02 challenge →

load-bearing objection A valuable catalog, honestly described, but the 66 pipeline misses omitted in §3.5.2 mean it is not yet the complete volume-limited sample it claims to be. the 1 major comments →

arxiv 2603.03069 v2 pith:ZQ24IPBH submitted 2026-03-03 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.COastro-ph.GA

ATLAS100 -- I. A volume-limited sample of supernovae and related transients within 100 Mpc

Shubham Srivastav , Stephen J. Smartt , Thomas Moore , Kenneth W. Smith , David R. Young , Michael D. Fulton , Charlotte R. Angus , Matt Nicholl
show 24 more authors
Heloise F. Stevance Ting-Wan Chen Andrea Pastorello Julian Sommer Fiorenzo Stoppa Jack W. Tweddle Joseph P. Anderson Mark E. Huber Armin Rest Lauren Rhodes Luke J. Shingles Aysha Aamer Alejandro Clocchiatti Alexander J. Cooper Nicolas Erasmus James H. Gillanders Dylan Magill Giuliano Pignata Paige Ramsden Brian P. Schmidt Xinyue Sheng Joshua G. Weston Larry Denneau John L. Tonry
This is my paper
classification astro-ph.HE astro-ph.COastro-ph.GA
keywords supernovaevolume-limited sampleATLAS surveytransient demographicssupernova rateshost galaxy redshiftslight curveslocal universe
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved

The pith

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The reading

This paper presents ATLAS100, a volume-limited catalog of 1,729 supernovae and other explosive optical transients within about 100 Mpc, drawn from 5.75 years of ATLAS survey data. The authors argue that for transients brighter than absolute magnitude about −16, the sample is effectively complete and nearly pure: 83 percent of events have secure host-galaxy redshifts and 87 percent have spectroscopic classifications. The catalog includes cleaned ATLAS light curves and model-derived peak luminosities and timescales, and the paper lays out the demographics of nearby explosions. If the completeness claim holds, this becomes a reference sample for measuring volumetric supernova rates and luminosity functions without the selection biases of magnitude-limited surveys.

Core claim

The central discovery is the ATLAS100 sample itself: 1,729 transients within z ≤ 0.025 observed by ATLAS from 2017 September 21 to 2023 June 21. By combining aggregated galaxy redshift catalogs with transient spectroscopic redshifts and carefully vetting host associations out to a projected radius of 50 kpc, the authors obtain an 83 percent redshift-complete and 87 percent spectroscopically classified census of the local volume. They show that the unclassified remainder resembles the classified sample in host offset and brightness, argue the classified set is essentially pure (100 percent for spectroscopically confirmed transients), and release binned ATLAS photometry with fitted peak lumino

What carries the argument

The machinery is the sample-selection and characterization pipeline: cross-matching every ATLAS transient against aggregated galaxy redshift catalogs within a 50 kpc projected radius, supplemented by spectroscopic redshifts of the transients themselves, followed by manual vetting, rejection of contaminants (novae, cataclysmic variables, background supernovae), and spectral reclassification. Completeness is anchored to an absolute-magnitude threshold of M_o ≈ −16 at 100 Mpc, where the survey's detection limit reaches; light curves are cleaned and binned, then fitted with analytic models (Bazin, salt2, and a plateau model) to extract peak luminosity and characteristic duration.

Load-bearing premise

The volume-limited claim rests on the assumption that ATLAS detects every transient brighter than about absolute magnitude −16 within 100 Mpc and that the missing faint transients in faint, redshift-less host galaxies do not systematically skew the demographics; the paper itself flags this residual incompleteness in Sections 3.5.1 and 3.5.3.

What would settle it

A deep spectroscopic or imaging survey of the 17% of host galaxies lacking prior redshifts that finds a substantial population of faint supernovae within 100 Mpc absent from ATLAS100 would falsify the completeness claim; likewise, a recovery simulation showing that transients brighter than M_o = −16 are missed at rates significantly above the survey's stated detection limit would undercut the sample's use for rates.

Watch this falsifier. Get emailed when new claim-graph text bears on it.

If this is right

  • If the completeness claims hold, ATLAS100 provides the raw material for volumetric rates of common and rare supernova types (II, Ia, SESN, Iax, IIn, CaST, ILRT, LRN, TDE) with known selection corrections.
  • The raw demographics—SNe II at 40 percent and SNe Ia at 35 percent of classified events—offer a local benchmark against magnitude-limited surveys, which typically overrepresent luminous subclasses.
  • The public release of 1,729 cleaned ATLAS light curves enables uniform measurement of peak luminosities and durations, for example revealing that Ic-BL supernovae may be shorter-lived than other stripped-envelope events.
  • The four tidal disruption events found within 100 Mpc imply a rate of roughly one optically bright TDE per 1.4 years in that volume, a directly testable demographic claim.
  • A well-characterized, low-redshift SN Ia anchor sample drawn from ATLAS100 can support cosmological distance-scale work by controlling selection and calibration systematics.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The 17 percent of hosts without prior catalog redshifts are the most likely reservoir of missed transients; targeted deeper spectroscopy or imaging of these galaxies could reveal how many faint events the sample misses, providing a direct test of the completeness boundary at M_o ≈ −16.
  • The paper's reclassification of many LBV eruptions as LRNe or ILRTs suggests that the relative rates of massive-star eruptions and gap transients may need revision; a systematic reanalysis of other magnitude-limited samples using the same joint light-curve and spectral criteria could confirm this shift.
  • The similarity in host-offset and magnitude distributions between classified and unclassified events supports treating the unclassified subset as a statistical proxy for the supernova population, but only if the fainter unclassified tail does not hide a distinct class of intrinsically faint transients—this can be tested by photometric classification of the unclassified light curves.
  • The duration-luminosity diagram constructed from this volume-limited sample could serve as a training set for photometric classification in larger, magnitude-limited surveys, potentially improving the purity of future transient samples.
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Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit.

Referee Report

1 major / 5 minor

Summary. ATLAS100 is a catalogue paper presenting 1729 optical transients within z≤0.025 observed by ATLAS between 2017 September 21 and 2023 June 21. Host associations are made via the Sherlock tool plus extensive manual vetting, and the paper releases cleaned, binned ATLAS photometry together with fitted peak luminosities and characteristic timescales. The authors report an 83% host-galaxy redshift completeness fraction, 87% spectroscopic classification completeness, and argue that the sample is essentially complete for transients brighter than M_o≈−16 within 100 Mpc, with only a small residual background contamination. They present raw demographics, host-separation distributions, and duration-luminosity diagrams, explicitly deferring corrected volumetric rates and luminosity functions to follow-up papers.

Significance. If the completeness claims hold, ATLAS100 will be an important community resource: it is a large, nearby, largely spectroscopically classified sample with public light curves, careful manual vetting, and external cross-checks against TNS and the ZTF BTS. The reclassification of ambiguous transients using joint light-curve and spectroscopic information is a genuine value-add. The main risk to the central claim is not the faint-end incompleteness, which the paper openly acknowledges and plans to model, but the known, unquantified omission of bright ATLAS-observed transients discussed in §3.5.2; this issue must be addressed before the volume-limited completeness claim is accepted.

major comments (1)
  1. [§3.5.2; §3.5.3; Table 2] The paper identifies 71 transients (66 'genuine misses' plus 5 lost to human error) at z≤0.025 that ATLAS forced photometry shows were detected at flux levels above typical ATLAS limiting magnitudes but that are absent from ATLAS100. These objects satisfy the sample definition of §2.2. They are neither included in the catalogue nor quantified, although the text states that a high fraction were nuclear or near bright galaxy cores. This known omission directly biases against nuclear transients (TDEs, AGN flares, central SNe) and can change the raw fractions in Table 2. It also undermines the §3.5.3 statement that the sample is complete to M_o≈−16 in this volume. I request that these objects be added via forced photometry with appropriate flags, or that the authors provide a quantitative assessment of the resulting bias and revise the completeness claim accordingly.
minor comments (5)
  1. [§3.5.2] A machine-readable list of the 251 missing TNS transients, in particular the 66 genuine misses and 5 human-error cases, should be included in the data release; aggregate counts alone do not let users assess or correct the bias.
  2. [Table 2] The Ia-91bg median duration is quoted as 20.6 (0.2) days for N_cut=16. The reported 1σ dispersion of 0.2 days for 16 objects seems implausibly small; please verify the entry or clarify what quantity the quoted uncertainty represents.
  3. [Figure 13] The figure legend uses 'with distance' and 'without distance', while the text and §3.5.1 describe 'with/without a prior catalogued redshift'; the wording should be made consistent.
  4. [§2.5] The text says a baseline flux correction was applied for 275 light curves of 246 unique transients among 3449 light curves. Please clarify whether the 275 vs 246 difference is due to multiple bands or repeated fitting; otherwise the numbers appear inconsistent.
  5. [§2.4; Acknowledgements] Minor typos: 'publicly availably data' should be 'publicly available data'; 'suveys' should be 'surveys' in the Acknowledgements.

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No significant circularity: ATLAS100 is an observational catalogue whose completeness claims are checked against external registries and not derived from the sample itself.

full rationale

This is a sample-definition and data-release paper, not a derivation with a load-bearing chain that reduces to its inputs. The sample is selected using external galaxy redshift catalogues (NED, LASr) and TNS classifications, and the central completeness claims are benchmarked against independent sources: a cross-match of all TNS transients with z≤0.025 yields 251 missing objects, a comparison with ZTF BTS finds no missing bright unclassified transients, and future recovery-efficiency simulations are planned with an external survey simulator (McBrien 2021). The acknowledged limitations are stated explicitly and located in §3.5.1–3.5.3, including the 66 'genuine misses' (§3.5.2) and the faint-end incompleteness (§3.5.3); these are completeness concerns, not circularity, because the missing set is not used to define or justify the sample. The light-curve fits (Bazin, SALT2, Villar) are standard external models applied to photometry; peak magnitudes and durations are measured outputs for the catalogue, not predictions derived from the sample definition. Reclassification of some gap transients using private follow-up data affects subtype labels only and does not enter the headline completeness or the volume-limited claim. Self-citations (e.g., Srivastav et al. 2022) provide prior rate estimates but are not load-bearing for sample construction. No circular step can be exhibited from the paper's own equations or self-citation chain.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

2 free parameters · 5 axioms · 0 invented entities

The paper introduces no new physical entities and no fitted model parameters for the central sample claim. The free parameters are the chosen sample definition thresholds. The key unproved inputs are domain assumptions about completeness of external catalogs (TNS, NED/LASr) and fidelity of ATLAS photometry.

free parameters (2)
  • Redshift threshold z ≤ 0.025 = 0.025
    Chosen to define the ~100 Mpc volume (D_L ≈ 109 Mpc at H0=70); a definitional threshold, not fitted to data, but directly sets sample size and completeness.
  • Projected association radius 50 kpc = 50 kpc
    Hand-selected radius for host galaxy association in sherlock; balances completeness for wide-offset SNe against background contamination (Section 2.2).
axioms (5)
  • domain assumption Distances are derived from redshifts assuming H0=70 km/s/Mpc and flat ΛCDM with ΩM=0.3
    Used to translate z≤0.025 to distance limit; Section 2.2.
  • domain assumption TNS is a complete registry of spectroscopically classified transients in the volume
    Used for completeness cross-checks (Section 3.5.2) and for redshifts when no host z is available.
  • domain assumption Spectroscopic template-matching redshifts (snid, Superfit, etc.) reported to two decimals are reliable enough for inclusion at z≤0.025
    Adopted for the 17% of transients without prior host galaxy redshifts; partially verified for 52 objects with 2D spectra (Section 2.3iv).
  • domain assumption ATLAS forced photometry and ATClean data products are accurate with the stated quality cuts (σF>160 μJy, χ2PSF>10 removed)
    All light curve fits and peak magnitudes rest on this calibration; Section 2.5.
  • domain assumption Manual vetting correctly distinguishes foreground contaminants and background supernovae
    Sample purity relies on these human judgments; Section 2.3.

reviewed 2026-08-02 · how reviews work

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Cite this review

Pith. "Pith review of ATLAS100 -- I. A volume-limited sample of supernovae and related transients within 100 Mpc." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/ZQ24IPBH

@misc{pith2026260303069,
  author       = {Pith},
  title        = {Pith review of: ATLAS100 -- I. A volume-limited sample of supernovae and related transients within 100 Mpc},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/ZQ24IPBH}},
  note         = {Machine review of arXiv:2603.03069}
}
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abstract

We present ATLAS100 -- a sample of 1729 supernovae and other explosive optical transients within $\sim 100$ Mpc observed by the ATLAS survey over a span of 5.75 years from 2017 September 21 to 2023 June 21. The volume-limited sample includes transients associated with galaxies with a spectroscopic redshift of $z \leq 0.025$, and spectroscopically classified transients within this redshift threshold where a host redshift was not available in existing catalogues. Our host galaxy list is constructed from aggregating all available galaxy redshift and distance catalogues. We carefully select all transients within a projected radius of 50\,kpc of these hosts. The ATLAS100 transient sample has a host galaxy redshift completeness fraction of $83$ per cent, consistent with expectations for the redshift completeness of local galaxy catalogues. Within this volume, the spectroscopic classifications are 87 per cent complete and we reclassify many ambiguous transients with joint light curve and spectroscopic considerations. Here, we release the catalogue together with compiled, binned and cleaned ATLAS photometry for all transients. We fit the light curve data to derive peak luminosity and characteristic timescales. We explore the sample characteristics, demographics and discuss completeness and purity of the sample.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2603.03069 by Alejandro Clocchiatti, Alexander J. Cooper, Andrea Pastorello, Armin Rest, Aysha Aamer, Brian P. Schmidt, Charlotte R. Angus, David R. Young, Dylan Magill, Fiorenzo Stoppa, Giuliano Pignata, Heloise F. Stevance, Jack W. Tweddle, James H. Gillanders, John L. Tonry, Joseph P. Anderson, Joshua G. Weston, Julian Sommer, Kenneth W. Smith, Larry Denneau, Lauren Rhodes, Luke J. Shingles, Mark E. Huber, Matt Nicholl, Michael D. Fulton, Nicolas Erasmus, Paige Ramsden, Shubham Srivastav, Stephen J. Smartt, Thomas Moore, Ting-Wan Chen, Xinyue Sheng.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: The 𝑜-band magnitude versus distance for transients with absolute magnitudes 𝑀𝑜 = −14 and 𝑀𝑜 = −15.9. The solid orange regions project the sensitivity of 𝑚𝑜 = 19.0 ± 0.5 to the distance to which a source would be detected. faintest known SN Iax 2019gsc (Srivastav et al. 2020a). The absolute magnitudes of 𝑀𝑜 = −14 and −16 also correspond to a normal SN Ia at 5 and 3 magnitudes before peak, at phases of roug… view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Histogram showing the number of matches to different source catalogues mined by sherlock for the host galaxies of 1729 transients in ATLAS100 sherlock. available, then the redshift derived from the classification report on TNS was adopted. The preliminary list of transients compiled following the criteria defined above was subjected to a careful vetting process to identify and eliminate contaminants, descr… view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Sky distribution of the ATLAS100 transient sample. Also shown (green circles) is the distribution of local galaxies within 100 Mpc from the Local AGN Survey (LASr; Asmus et al. 2020). epoch. To test this, we checked the fraction of events within the clas￾sified and unclassified subsamples that emerged from solar conjunc￾tion; i.e. with no recent pre-discovery non-detections in their ATLAS forced photometry… view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Upper panel: distribution of TNS discovery magnitude versus redshift for all transients in ATLAS100. The ATLAS discoveries (689 of the total 1729) are shown in either orange or cyan, depending on whether the discovery filter was 𝑜-band or 𝑐-band. Non-ATLAS discoveries are shown as black circles. The histograms for redshift and discovery magnitude are for the full sample, with bin widths of Δ𝑧 = 0.00167 (co… view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Upper panel: histogram of first ATLAS 5𝜎 detection for the clas￾sified (blue) and unclassified (red) sub-samples. The full sample is shown in grey, and the y-axis is normalized to the total number of counts for a di￾rect comparison. Lower panel: ATLAS peak magnitude for the classified and unclassified sub-samples. The bin width is 0.5 mag. (3.2%), 27 as Ia-91bg (5.1%), 14 as Iax (2.6%). There is a small nu… view at source ↗
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Spectroscopic classifications for the transients in ATLAS100. TDE 10.0% LRN 30.0% ILRT 27.5% AGN 2.5% LBV 7.5% LFBOT 2.5% CaST 20.0% Other (2.3%) [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p010_6.png] view at source ↗
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Spectroscopic classifications for the subset of transients labelled as “Other” in [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p010_7.png] view at source ↗
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Projected angular separation (′′) from the host galaxy for the key distinct spectroscopic types in the sample: SNe Ia, SNe II, SESNe and unclassified transients. 0 10 20 30 40 50 Projected Physical Separation (kpc) 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Cumulative Frequency SN Ia SESN SN II Unclassified [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p012_8.png] view at source ↗
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Projected physical separation (in kiloparsec) from the host galaxy for the key distinct spectroscopic types in the sample, including SNe Ia, SNe II, SESNe and unclassified events. MNRAS 000, 1–?? (2026) [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p012_9.png] view at source ↗
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Projected physical separation (in kiloparsec) from the host galaxy for gap transient families in the sample including LBVs, LRNe, ILRTs and CaSTs. 3.3.4 Unclassified and Other Transients For unclassified transients, and transients belonging to the “Other” category ( [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p013_10.png] view at source ↗
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: Sample ATLAS 𝑜-band light curves of ATLAS100 transients across different spectral types and varying light curve quality and coverage. Also shown for each light curve is the best-fitting model that was used to derive the peak flux and the characteristic timescale or duration of the light curve. The shaded region represents the measured duration above half the peak flux. median peak absolute magnitude for S… view at source ↗
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: Peak luminosity versus rest-frame timescale or duration in 𝑜-band for all transients in the ATLAS100 sample that passed the light curve quality cuts. A selection of individual events across different spectral types are highlighted in the plot. faint precursors as shown in the search for faint transients in the Pan-STARRS surveys by Fulton et al. (2025). A forthcoming study will focus on the subsample of S… view at source ↗
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: Histogram showing the brightness distribution of host galaxies in ATLAS100 from sherlock. A majority (83%) of the host galaxies have a catalogued redshift (shown in red). The hosts without a prior catalogued redshift (shown in blue), where the transient redshift was inferred from the classification spectrum, represent a fainter population of host galaxies. 0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 z 0 100… view at source ↗
Figure 14
Figure 14. Figure 14: Histogram showing the redshift distribution of sources in the LASr (Asmus et al. 2020) and NED-LVS (Cook et al. 2023) catalogues within a redshift of 0.03. The dashed line (𝑧 2 ) represents the volume, normalized to the redshift bin at 𝑧 = 0.01, since the local galaxy distribution at low redshift is dominated by the Local Group and Virgo Supercluster. major sources for a host galaxy spectroscopic redshift… view at source ↗

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Works this paper leans on

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    2026

This paper was first reviewed by deepseek-v4-flash on August 2, 2026.