Observations of Type Ia supernovae are extremely important to the cosmic distance ladder. They are very bright, so can be seen over very large distances, and they are consistent enough to track the expansion history of the universe. But there are still many questions regarding the type of system that lead to such an explosion, One possible progenitor population is double white dwarfs - they explode when the two stars of the binary merge to form a super-Chandrasekhar mass white dwarf. But are there enough of them in the Galaxy to account for the rate of Type Ia supernovae we see?

Quick links:

• Find out more about our SDSS survey with which we try and answer this question: MNRAS paper here
  (Alternatively: arXiv:1702.05117)

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