Recent Swift X-ray Observations of the TDE Candidate AT2020ocn
ATel #13863; J. M. Miller, M. T. Reynolds (Univ. of Michigan)
on 13 Jul 2020; 14:34 UT
Credential Certification: Jon Miller (jonmm@umich.edu)
Subjects: X-ray, AGN, Black Hole, Transient, Tidal Disruption Event
Referred to by ATel #: 13864
AT2020ocn is a new TDE candidate, at a redshift of 0.0705 (ATEL #13859). It is particularly compelling in that it showed a rising X-ray flux over a period of approximately two weeks, reaching a maximum flux of 2.87e-12 ergs/s/cm^2 in the 0.3-1.5 keV band on 10 July 2020.
The most recent exposures with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory XRT camera suggest that the X-ray rise may have halted. Observations made on 13 July 2020 total 5 ks of exposure, and gathered 212 net counts. After binning to require 10 events per bin, fits with a simple blackbody measure a temperature of kT = 0.12 +/- 0.01 keV, and a flux of 1.05 E-12 erg/s/cm^2 in the 0.3-1.5 keV band.
Swift observations should continue over the next two weeks, typically accumulating 5 ks of XRT exposure per day to enable basic spectral fitting. We thank Brad Cenko and the Swift team for actively monitoring AT2020ocn.
