Discovery of ZTF18abauprj, a young Type Ia supernova in NGC 6279
ATel #11721; A. A. Miller (Northwestern), E. Bellm M. Graham (University of Washington), A. Ho, S. M. Adams, K. De, C. Fremling, S. R. Kulkarni (Caltech), D. A. Perley (LJMU), A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann), A. Goobar (OKC) on behalf of a larger collaboration
on 16 Jun 2018; 00:32 UT
Credential Certification: Adam Miller (amiller@astro.caltech.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Supernovae, Transient
We report the detection of a new transient candidate identified during routine operations of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; ATel #11266). The transient, named ZTF18abauprj, was discovered on 2018-06-15.25 UT with g = 19.4 mag.
ZTF18abauprj is located at R.A., Dec = 16:59:05.07 +47:14:11.1 (J2000), roughly 37.5 arcsec (~19 kpc) from the nucleus of NGC 6279. The transient was not detected in images obtained the night prior to detection, 2018-06-14 UT, to a detection limit of g > 20.9 mag. Adopting a distance modulus of 35.1 mag to NGC 6279, the absolute magnitude of ZTF18abauprj at the time of discovery is M_g = -15.7.
We obtained a low-resolution spectrum of ZTF18abauprj on 2018-06-15.39 UT with the Dual Imaging Spectrograph (DIS) on the Apache Point Observatory 3.5 m telescope. The spectrum primarily shows a blue continuum, with weak features that we tentatively identify as Si II and Fe III. The spectrum suggests that ZTF18abauprj is a young type Ia supernova. Further observations are encouraged.
ZTF (http://ztf.caltech.edu) is a project led by PI S. R. Kulkarni at Caltech (see ATEL #11266), and includes IPAC; WIS, Israel; OKC, Sweden; JSI/UMd, USA; UW, USA; DESY, Germany; NRC, Taiwan; UW Milwaukee, USA and LANL USA. ZTF acknowledges the generous support of the NSF under AST MSIP Grant No 1440341. Alert distribution service provided by DIRAC@UW. Alert filtering and co-ordinated follow-up is being undertaken by the GROWTH (http://growth.caltech.edu) marshal system, supported by NSF PIRE grant 1545949.
