Large amplitude near-infrared flaring of B2 1420+32 detected with Palomar Gattini-IR
ATel #12941; K. De (Caltech), M. Hankins (Caltech), R. Soria (NAO), M. M. Kasliwal (Caltech), A. Moore (ANU), J. Soon (ANU), T. Travouillon (ANU), S. M. Adams (Caltech), M. Ashley (UNSW), J. Burnham (Caltech), A. Delacroix (Caltech), T. Greffe (Caltech), D. Hale (Caltech), R. Lau (JAXA), D. McKenna (Caltech), E. O. Ofek (Weizmann), R. Smith (Caltech), J. Sokoloski (Columbia)
on 14 Jul 2019; 20:29 UT
Credential Certification: Kishalay De (kde@astro.caltech.edu)
Subjects: Infra-Red, Optical, Blazar, Quasar, Transient
We report on near-infrared variability of the blazar B2 1420+32 detected in regular survey operations of Palomar Gattini-IR. Gattini-IR is a new wide-field infrared survey telescope at Palomar observatory with a field of view of 25 square degrees, and scans the entire visible northern sky every two nights to a median depth of 16 AB mag in J band (Moore & Kasliwal 2019).
Variability in B21420+32 was identified in difference imaging produced by the real-time data reduction pipeline of Gattini-IR (De et al. in prep.) and the source was saved with the internal name PGIR 19gu. Forced photometry at the location of the source shows large amplitude variability in J band in the last six months, brightening from J = 15.3 mag on JD 2458481.0695 to J = 12.5 mag on JD 2458672.7248 (reported magnitudes are in the Vega system). There is no source detected in 2MASS at this position. The near-infrared brightening is consistent with that reported in ATel #12379, #12866, #12886, #12887 and #12914. A plot of the forced photometry light curve can be found in the attached link. Upper limits are shown as triangles at 5 sigma confidence. The full light curve for this source is available upon request.
PGIR19gu Gattini light curve
