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Three Blue Rapidly Rising Transients Discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility

ATel #13667; A. Y. Q. Ho (Caltech), D. A. Perley (LJMU), Y. Yao (Caltech), K. De (Caltech), I. Andreoni (Caltech), M. M. Kasliwal (Caltech)
on 25 Apr 2020; 00:00 UT
Credential Certification: Anna Ho (ah@astro.caltech.edu)

Subjects: Optical, Transient

We report the recent discovery of three fast-rising transients as part of the one-day cadence survey of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; ATel #11266).

ZTF20aaurzxs (AT2020hjq) was discovered at g=20.16 +/- 0.17 on 2020 Apr 15. In two days, it rose to a peak magnitude of g=18.73 +/- 0.07 with blue colors at peak (g-r=-0.3). Since then, it has been fading gradually (~0.06 mag/day). The position is 0.23+/-0.07 arcseconds from a faint (g~21.8) galaxy in SDSS, with a photometric redshift of 0.156 +/- 0.0552. Six days after peak, we obtained a spectrum with SPRAT on the Liverpool Telescope that shows a blue continuum with a possible broad emission feature around 6300AA.

ZTF20aavpyxo (AT2020iak) was discovered at g=20.46 +/- 0.19 on 2020 Apr 23. It rose ~1.4 mag in 1 day and is ~10'' from a star-forming galaxy in SDSS with a spectroscopic redshift z=0.061, making the absolute g-band magnitude M=-18.06. Subsequent LT photometry shows blue colors (g-r=-0.2).

ZTF20aavvaup was discovered at g=19.50+/-0.12 on 2020 Apr 24, an increase of 1.23 mag from an upper limit the previous night. The transient is ~5'' from a starburst galaxy in SDSS with a spectroscopic redshift z=0.033, and 0.65+/-0.04'' from a blue compact region classified as extended in SDSS, the LegacySurvey, and a star-galaxy separator based on Pan-STARRS1 (Tachibana & Miller 2018). At the distance to the galaxy, the absolute g-band magnitude M=-16.2. Subsequent LT photometry shows blue colors (g-r=-0.14).

We encourage spectroscopic follow-up and classification of these transients.

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.