Spectroscopic follow-up of ZTF 19aadyppr: A young and red transient in M51
ATel #12433; K. De (Caltech), L. Tartaglia (OKC), I. Andreoni (Caltech), F. J. Galindo Guil (NOT), M. Hankins (Caltech), J. Sollerman (OKC), A. Goobar (OKC), F. Taddia (OKC), C. Barbarino (OKC), A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann) on behalf of the ZTF and GROWTH collaborations
on 26 Jan 2019; 20:43 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Transients
Credential Certification: Kishalay De (kde@astro.caltech.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Transient
Referred to by ATel #: 12506
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; ATel #11266) reports spectroscopic follow-up of a young transient, ZTF19aadyppr (AT 2019abn, TNS #29197) in M51 at 8.6 Mpc (McQuinn et al. 2017). The source was first detected on MJD 58505.555 at a r-band magnitude of 19.58 (absolute magnitude of -10.1), and has been rising in ZTF data over 3 days.
We obtained spectroscopic follow-up of the transient using the ALFOSC on the Nordic Optical Telescope and DBSP on the Palomar 200-inch telescope. The spectra exhibit red continua with strong intermediate width (FWHM ~ 600 km/s) H alpha emission lines, although we cannot rule out contamination from a nearby H II region. This suggests that the source is either a reddened SN impostor or a young Intermediate Luminosity Red Transient (ILRT). Further follow-up is underway and encouraged.
ZTF 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 is being undertaken by the GROWTH marshal system, supported by NSF PIRE grant 1545949.