Liverpool Telescope spectral classification of a possible young type II supernova in NGC 5371
ATel #13432; I. Perez-Fournon, C. Jimenez Angel, F. Poidevin, R. Shirley (IAC & ULL), R. Marques-Chaves (CAB), S. W. Jha (Rutgers), S. Rodney (Univ. of South Carolina), on behalf of the SIRAH team
on 31 Jan 2020; 17:14 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Ismael Perez-Fournon (ipf@iac.es)
Subjects: Optical, Supernovae, Transient
We report spectroscopic observations with SPRAT on the Liverpool Telescope (LT) of a bright transient in NGC 5731 discovered by
Koichi Itagaki on 2020-01-29 18:27:37 UT, AT 2020bio, with a magnitude of 16.7. It has been detected also by ATLAS, on 2020-01-30 12:38:52 UT,
with an orange ATLAS magnitude of 16.444. Our LT SPRAT spectrum was obtained on 2020-01-31 05:02:54 UT. It shows a blue continuum,
a narrow H-alpha emission line at the redshift of NGC 5731 (z=0.008533, from NED), and a weak, broad feature that is probably He I 5876 A.
This transient is most likely a very young type II SN. We encourage photometric and spectroscopic follow up.
Based on observations made with the Liverpool Telescope operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the
Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.
