Supernova (SN) remnants are a well motivated candidate for the acceleration sites of cosmic rays with energies up to the knee (10^15 eV). It has been suggested that also young SNe (~<1 year after the explosion) may be able to accelerate cosmic rays t
o even higher energies. A smoking gun for cosmic-ray acceleration in young SNe would be the production of very-high-energy (VHE, >10 GeV) gamma-ray radiation. The H.E.S.S. imaging air Cherenkov telescope array is an instrument sensitive to such radiation. In this contribution, the pointing directions of the H.E.S.S. telescopes are compared to a recently published, extragalactic SN catalogue to identify coincidental observations. The results of the data analysis are discussed.
H.E.S.S. is an array of five Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located 1800 m above sea level in the Khomas Highland of Namibia and is sensitive to very-high-energy (VHE) gamma rays between tens of GeV to tens of TeV. The very-high bac
kground rejection capabilities of IACTs provide excellent sensitivity of H.E.S.S. to GRBs. In this contribution the status of the H.E.S.S. GRB programme, already started in 2003, is reviewed. A highlight is the recent addition of the fifth telescope, which is the worlds largest IACT. Its 600 square metre mirror lowers the energy threshold to tens of GeV and provides an effective area that is ten thousands of times larger than Fermi-LAT at these energies. The higher performance drive system will reduce the response time to a GRB alert, which will significantly enhance the chances of a H.E.S.S. GRB detection. Recent results on selected GRBs will be shown.
