Long-term monitoring of the radio emission from supernovae with the Very Large Array ( VLA ) shows that the radio “ light curves ” evolve in a systematic fashion with a distinct peak flux density ( and thus , in combination with a distance , a peak spectral luminosity ) at each frequency and a well-defined time from explosion to that peak .
Studying these two quantities at 6 cm wavelength , peak spectral luminosity ( L _ { 6 cm peak } ) and time after explosion date ( t _ { 0 } ) to reach that peak ( t _ { 6 cm peak } - t _ { 0 } ) , we find that they appear related .
In particular , based on two objects , Type Ib supernovae may be approximate radio “ standard candles ” with a 6 cm peak luminosity L _ { 6 cm peak } \approx 19.9 \times 10 ^ { 26 } erg s ^ { -1 } Hz ^ { -1 } ; also based on two objects , Type Ic supernovae may be approximate radio “ standard candles ” with a 6 cm peak luminosity L _ { 6 cm peak } \approx 6.5 \times 10 ^ { 26 } erg s ^ { -1 } Hz ^ { -1 } ; and , based on twelve objects , Type II supernovae appear to obey a relation L _ { 6 cm peak } \simeq 5.5 \times 10 ^ { 23 } ( t _ { 6 cm peak } - t _ { 0 } ) ^ { 1.4 } erg s ^ { -1 } Hz ^ { -1 } , with time measured in days .
If these relations are supported by further observations , they provide a means for determining distances to supernovae , and thus to their parent galaxies , from purely radio continuum observations .

With currently available sensitivity of the VLA , it is possible to employ these relations for objects further than the Virgo Cluster out to \sim 100 Mpc .
With planned improvements to the VLA and the possible construction of more sensitive radio telescopes , these techniques could be extended to z \sim 1 for some classes of bright radio supernovae .