Title: Doubling the nearby supernova type Ia sample
Description: Optical photometry for 185 Supernovae Type Ia (SN Ia) from the F. L. Whipple Observatory is presented, more than doubling the nearby sample. Over 11500 CCD observations were acquired during the years 2001-2008. Our photometry is internally consistent and agrees to a few hundredths mag with that of other groups in cases where the same SN was observed. The peculiar SN Ia, SN 2006gz is explored in greater detail. It showed the strongest signs ever of unburned carbon in a SN Ia. It also was unusually broad and overluminous in its light curve, and may be the result of a super-Chandrasekhar progenitor and/or the merger of two white dwarfs. The 185 SN Ia are added to SN Ia from the literature to improve the constraints on the dark energy equation of state parameter, w , reducing the statistical uncertainty to the point where systematic uncertainties in SN Ia photometry and distance fitters, particularly related to host-galaxy dust properties, are the main sources of uncertainty in SN Ia cosmology.