Optical and near-infrared polarimetric observations of the IceCube-170922A counterpart candidate TXS 0506+056
ATel #11489; M. Yamanaka (Hiroshima Univ.), T. Morokuma (The Univ. of Tokyo), R. Itoh (Tokyo Inst. of Tech.), K. Ohta (Kyoto Univ.), K. S. Kawabata, M. Kawabata, T. Nakaoka (Hiroshima Univ.), on behalf of the OISTER collaboration
on 29 Mar 2018; 12:02 UT
Credential Certification: Masayuki Yamanaka (masyamanaka@hiroshima-u.ac.jp)
Subjects: Infra-Red, Optical, Blazar, Transient
We report recent optical and near-infrared polarimetric observations of TXS 0506+056 (ATEL #10773, #10791, #10773, and references therein). We carried out polarimetric observations of TXS 0506+056 using the Hiroshima Optical and Near-InfraRed camera (HONIR; Akitaya et al. 2014, Proc. SPIE 9147, 91474) installed to the Cassegrain focus of the 1.5-m Kanata telescope at the Higashi-Hiroshima Observatory on Mar 22.5, 24.5, and 25.5 (UT). The measured R-band polarization was 1.8 +/- 0.8%, 6.2 +/- 1.2% and 6.6 +/- 2.3% on Mar 22.5, 24.5 and 25.5, respectively. Steele et al. recently reported the high polarization degree of 14% on Mar 14 (ATEL #11430). After that, we find the polarization degree rapidly decreases and returns to a comparable level of that on 2017, Sep 30 in our previous report (ATEL #10844). The rapid variation of polarization degree within the past two weeks is consistent with being a BL Lac object.
