Spectroscopic observation of the transient ZTF19acqprad/AT2019uky in M31
ATel #13362; Monika Soraisam (NCSA/UIUC), Chien-Hsiu Lee, Thomas Matheson (NSF OIR Lab), Rafael Nunez, Kevin McKinnon, Puragra Guhathakurta (UCSC), Abhijit Saha (NSF OIR Lab), WeiKang Zheng, Alexei V. Filippenko (UC Berkeley), Chien-Chu Wei (UCSC)
on 21 Dec 2019; 13:55 UT
Credential Certification: Monika Soraisam (soraisam@illinois.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Cataclysmic Variable, Nova, Transient
We report a spectroscopic observation of the transient ZTF19acqprad/AT2019uky in M31. It was flagged by a filter on the ANTARES alert-broker (https://antares.noao.edu/) customized to find promising stellar explosive events from the ZTF public alert stream.
Name | Alternative name | RA (J2000) | Dec (J2000) | First detection: MJD, mag
ZTF19acqprad | AT2019uky | 00:44:25.14 | 41:33:18.08 | 58795.194838, g~18.8+/-0.08
On 2019 Nov. 21 UT, we obtained the spectrum of this source with the Kast double spectrograph on the Shane 3 m telescope at Lick Observatory via a ToO program (2019B_S040; PI Guhathakurta). The spectrum shows prominent Balmer emission lines, with the FWHM of the H-alpha line around 1100 km/s, along with emission lines of O I and Fe II as well as from the Paschen series between 8800 and 9500 Å. The transient is, thus, an Fe II-type nova in M31, which is consistent with its slowly-declining light curve (https://antares.noao.edu/alerts/locus/6355238).
We thank the staff of Lick Observatory, in particular, Dan Espinosa and Dr. Elinor Gates, for their help in executing the ToO observation.
