MeerKAT observations revealed a rapid rising outburst of the recurrent black hole GX339-4

ATel #14336; Evangelia Tremou (Observatoire de Paris), Stephane Corbel (Universite de Paris), Rob Fender (Oxford & UCT), Patrick Woudt (UCT), James Miller-Jones (Curtin), Sara Motta (Oxford), Gregory R. Sivakoff (University of Alberta) on behalf of the ThunderKAT collaboration
on 20 Jan 2021; 14:30 UT
Credential Certification: Evangelia Tremou (evangelia.tremou@obspm.fr)

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As part of the ThunderKAT Large Survey Programme (Fender et al. 2017, arXiv:1711.04132), the recurrent black hole transient GX339-4 is observed on a weekly basis with the MeerKAT radio telescope, located in South Africa. The latest MeerKAT observations showed that GX339-4 is likely entering into a new outburst phase.

We report on fluxes of the last three observing epochs, 0.17 hr integration time each. The observation on 2021-01-04 14:20 UTC revealed a point source at the location of GX 339-4 with flux density 264 +/- 25 uJy. On 2021-01-09 08:25 UTC, the flux density increased to 363 +/- 16 uJy, while on 2021-01-16 07:35 UTC it had risen by almost a factor of 3, reaching 1.08 +/- 0.03 mJy.

All observations were taken at a central frequency of 1.284 GHz (L-band) with a total bandwidth of 860MHz. We encourage further multi-wavelength observations.

ThunderKAT will run for 5 years and targets X-ray binaries, cataclysmic variables, supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. As part of this programme we perform weekly monitoring observation of all bright, active, southern hemisphere X-ray binaries in the radio band. For further information on this programme please contact Rob Fender and/or Patrick Woudt.

We thank the staff at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) for scheduling and carrying out these observations. The MeerKAT telescope is operated by the SARAO, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation.