Archival ROSAT and Swift X-ray observations near optical peak of the outbursting AGN AT2018jcp/Gaia20bta/ZTF18aakebhi
ATel #13879; Dheeraj R Pasham (MIT)
on 19 Jul 2020; 05:14 UT
Credential Certification: Dheeraj Pasham (drreddy@mit.edu)
AT2018jcp is a known AGN at a redshift of 0.063 which has been in an outburst since late October of 2018. Swift/XRT made the first X-ray observations of this outburst on 26 June 2020 which coincided with its optical peak.
A bright X-ray point source coincident with the optical position is present in XRT images. Its X-ray spectrum is consistent with a power-law with an index of 2+-0.3. The corresponding 0.3-10 keV unabsorbed flux is 4.5e-12 erg/s/cm^2.
X-ray emission was also evident in archival ROSAT images. This source was present in ROSAT all-sky survey bright sources catalog with a count rate of 0.08+-0.01 cps. Using WebPIMMS and the same power-law model as above, this implies a 0.3-10 keV unabsorbed flux of 1e-12 erg/s/cm^2. The most recent Swift observation suggests an X-ray enhancement of roughly 4.5.
The optical brightness appears to have just started declining. Follow-up observations are encouraged.
