Upper limits to radio emission from GAIA BH3 with the VLA

ATel #16677; Lorant O Sjouwerman (NRAO/UNM), Jay M Blanchard (NRAO)
on 28 Jun 2024; 05:20 UT
Credential Certification: Lorant Sjouwerman (lsjouwer@nrao.edu)

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We report upper limits to any radio emission from GAIA BH3, at (J2000) R.A. 19:39:18.712 Dec. +14:55:54.01, determined with the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in B-array configuration on 2024-06-12, starting at 11:30UTC. GAIA BH3 is suggested to be a 33 Msun black hole in a low-metallicity binary stellar system (see Panuzzo et al. 2024, A&A 686, L2; Gilfanov et al. 2024 ATel 16591; Balbinot et al. 2024, A&A 687, L3). When achieving noise levels of about 17, 13, and 15 uJy/beam at 3, 10 and 22 GHz (or S-, X- and K-band) respectively, we do not detect any significant radio emission, i.e., more than about 2.8-3.1 sigma, in the direct vicinity of GAIA BH3 during each of the ~10-minute wideband continuum observations per receiver band. Potential more sensitive future observations would yield an even stricter upper limit (or a detection) of radio emission of GAIA BH3 and aid in the modeling of stellar evolution in such low-metallicity and high-mass binary stellar systems. We thank the NRAO DDT-reviewers and VLA schedulers for their swiftness and flexibility.