Discovery with the Liverpool Telescope of the superluminous supernova SN 2020qlb (ZTF20abobpcb, ATLAS20vmc)
ATel #13936; I. Perez-Fournon, F. Poidevin, C. Jimenez Angel (IAC & ULL), R. Shirley (Univ. of Southampton), R. Marques-Chaves (CAB), S. Geier (GRANTECAN & IAC), Y. Shu (IoA), S. Rodney, J. Roberts-Pierel (Univ. of South Carolina), A. Bolton (NSF's NOIRLab), S. Chakrabarti, P. Craig, and B. Alamiri (RIT)
on 11 Aug 2020; 20:44 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Supernovae
Credential Certification: Ismael Perez-Fournon (ipf@iac.es)
Subjects: Optical, Supernovae, Transient
We report the discovery of the type-I superluminous supernova SN 2020qlb based on observations with the SPRAT spectrograph (Piascik et al. 2014) on the Liverpool Telescope (LT,
Steele et al. 2004) of the ZTF transient ZTF20abobpcb (detected also by ATLAS, ATLAS20vmc) as part of the project Supernova and Gravitational Lenses Follow up (SGLF). ZTF20abobpcb was selected by us as a superluminous supernova candidate using the public ZTF alerts.
The first ZTF detection, r-ZTF = 20.51 +/- 0.22 on 2020-07-23 07:58:09 UT, was reported to TNS by ZTF and SGLF. ATLAS reported a first detection, orange-ATLAS = 18.959 +/- 0.158 on 2020-08-07 10:16:19 UT. Our LT SPRAT spectrum was obtained on 2020-08-10 23:16:33 UT and the classification and redshift were determined using SNID (S. Blondin & J. L. Tonry 2007, ApJ, 666, 1024) and reported to TNS. The best SNID fit is for the SLSN-I PTF09cnd at a redshift of 0.159 18 days before maximum light.
The likely host galaxy is SDSS J190749.52+625749.2, a very faint source also detected in the PanSTARRS-1 and DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys.
The supernova flux is still rising with the last reported ZTF magnitudes r-ZTF = 18.694 +/- 0.081 on 2020-08-10 08:20:09 UT and g-ZTF = 18.523 +/- 0.078 on 2020-08-10 09:54:55 UT.
We encourage photometric and spectroscopic follow up of SN 2020qlb.
Based on observations made with the Liverpool Telescope, installed at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, in the island of La Palma. The Liverpool Telescope is operated by Liverpool John Moores University with financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. We are very grateful to the Liverpool Telescope staff for the operations of the telescope and instrument pipelines. The imaging data were provided by the Zwicky Transient Facility (https://www.ztf.caltech.edu) and processed through the Lasair (https://lasair.roe.ac.uk), ALeRCE (https://alerce.online), ANTARES (https://antares.noirlab.edu), and MARS (https://mars.lco.global) brokers.
