Potential progenitor detection for the transient in NGC 5775 in archival HST data

ATel #4009; E. Berger, G. H. Marion (Harvard/CfA), E. Hsiao (LCO), R. Foley, R. Chornock (Harvard/CfA)
on 29 Mar 2012; 18:09 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Transients
Credential Certification: Edo Berger (eberger@cfa.harvard.edu)

We observed the location of the Catalina Sky Survey transient PSN J14535395+0334049, which spectroscopically resembles SN2008S (Howerton et al. ATEL #4004), with the MMT & Magellan Infrared Spectrograph (MMIRS) on 2012 March 29.33 UT. Observations were obtained in J-band in ~0.5" seeing. Using 17 sources in common between our MMIRS image and an archival HST ACS/F625W image of NGC 5775 (program 10416; PI: Rossa), we locate the position of the transient to a relative astrometric accuracy of about 60 mas in RA and Dec. Within the 1-sigma region around the transient position we detect a faint source in the HST image with an F625W AB mag of 25.5-26 mag (uncertainty dominated by the non-uniform background). At the distance of NGC 5775, this corresponds to an absolute magnitude of -6.1 to -6.6 mag. An image of the field with the position of the source is available from: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~eberger/PSN1453+0334_HST.ps