Detection of FRB190322 at the Molonglo Radio Telescope
ATel #12610; V. Gupta (Swinburne University of Technology "SUT"), M. Bailes (SUT), A. Jameson (SUT), C. Flynn (SUT), W. Farah (SUT), T. Bateman (The University of Sydney "USyd"), E. D. Barr (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie "MPIfR"), S. Bhandari (CSIRO/ATNF), M. Caleb (University of Manchester), D. Campbell-Wilson (USyd), C. Day (SUT), A. Deller (SUT), A. J. Green (USyd), R. W. Hunstead (USyd), F. Jankowski (University of Manchester), E. F. Keane (Square Kilometer Array Organisation), M. E. Lower (SUT), S. Oslowski (SUT), A. Parthasarathy (SUT), K. Plant (Caltech), D. C. Price (SUT), V. Ravi (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), R. M. Shannon (SUT), A. Sutherland (USyd), D. Temby (USyd), G. Torr (USyd), G. Urquhart (USyd), V. Venkatraman Krishnan (MPIfR)
on 25 Mar 2019; 03:50 UT
Credential Certification: Wael Farah (wfarah@swin.edu.au)
Subjects: Radio, Fast Radio Burst
Referred to by ATel #: 12612
At UTC 2019-03-22-07:00:12.3 (2019-03-22.29180903), we found a fast radio burst as part of the ongoing search program (UTMOST), at the Molonglo telescope.
Molonglo is a 1.6 km long East-West array (Bailes et al 2017, PASA, 34, 45) and was operating in drift-scan mode with pointing centred on the meridian at the time of detection. Source localisation is excellent in Right Ascension (5 arcsec at 1-sigma) but poor in
Declination (~1.2 deg at 1-sigma) (see Caleb et al 2017 MNRAS 468, 3746).
FRB190322 was found during a blind FRB search programme in real-time using an automated GPU-accelerated/machine learning based pipeline and the raw voltages were recorded for offline processing.
The optimal dispersion measure (DM) that maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio is: 724.2 pc cm^-3. The DM estimate of NE2001 model is ~47.1 pc cm^-3, and YMW16 model is ~46.78 pc cm^-3 at this position, resulting in an intergalactic excess of ~677 pc cm^-3. The upper limit on the DM-inferred redshift is thus z ~ 0.6.
An early estimate (lower limit) of the event's apparent fluence is ~16 Jy ms (corrected for attenuation of the primary beam in the RA direction, but not in the Dec direction), width ~ 1.35 ms, with a detection signal-to-noise ratio = 12.
The most likely position is RA = 04:46:14.45, DEC = -66:55:27.8, J2000, Galactic: Gl = 278.166 deg, Gb = -36.921 deg. The 95% confidence localisation arc is as follows: (RA, DEC) in (hours, deg)
4.745128 -70.779222
4.749025 -70.278667
4.752725 -69.778056
4.756242 -69.277444
4.759589 -68.776806
4.762778 -68.276167
4.765822 -67.775500
4.768725 -67.274806
4.771503 -66.774111
4.774158 -66.273417
4.776700 -65.772694
4.779136 -65.271972
4.781472 -64.771222
4.783714 -64.270500
4.785867 -63.769722
4.787936 -63.268972
4.789925 -62.768194
A formula describing the localisation arc is:
RA = 4.7701477 + 5.677894e-3*(DEC + 67.024292) - 2.568521e-4*(DEC + 67.024292)**2
where RA is in hours, Dec is in deg, and is valid in the Dec [-71.3,-62.8]
For the dynamic spectra, and the localisation plots, follow
this link.
Follow-up observations of the FRB are encouraged.