Palomar Gattini-IR NIR discovery of a candidate young supernova PGIR20eid / AT2020qmp in UGC07125 at 12 Mpc

ATel #13909; K. De (Caltech), M. Hankins (Caltech), M. M. Kasliwal (Caltech), M. Ashley (UNSW), A. Babul (Columbia), J. Jencson (Arizona), V. Karambelkar (Caltech), R. M. Lau (ISAS/JAXA), A. Moore (ANU), E. O. Ofek (Weizmann), M. Sharma (Columbia), J. Sokoloski (Columbia), J. Soon (ANU), R. Soria (NAOC), T. Travouillon (ANU) on behalf of the Palomar Gattini-IR team
on 30 Jul 2020; 18:46 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Kishalay De (kde@astro.caltech.edu)

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We report the discovery of a bright candidate supernova found in regular survey operations of Palomar Gattini-IR (De et al. 2020; Moore and Kasliwal 2019). Palomar Gattini-IR is a wide-field NIR transient survey scanning the entire Northern sky to a median depth of 15.7 AB mag every two nights.

The bright near-infrared transient PGIR20eid / AT2020qmp was first detected on UT 2020-07-30 at a magnitude J = 14.74 +/- 0.02 AB mag, at J2000 coordinates

RA 12:08:44.43
Dec +36:48:19.4

The transient was not detected on UT 2020-07-25 to a depth of 15.1 AB mag. The transient is coincident with a spiral arm of the nearby galaxy UGC07125, reported at a median distance of 12 Mpc in NED. At an assumed distance of 12 Mpc, the absolute magnitude of the transient is -15.7 mag in J band, suggesting a young supernova when combined with the recent non-detection.

We encourage rapid spectroscopic and multi-color photometric follow-up of the source.