Optical observations of the field containing SGR 0418+5729
ATel #2169; E. Ratti (SRON), D. Steeghs (Warwick), P. G.Jonker (SRON/Utrecht)
on 21 Aug 2009; 16:50 UT
Credential Certification: Danny Steeghs (dsteeghs@cfa.harvard.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Binary, Neutron Star, Soft Gamma-ray Repeater, Pulsar
We report on optical imaging near the recently announced Chandra position of
the Soft Gamma Repeater SGR 0418+5729 (ATEL #2159).
We acquired four 300s r-band images of the field containing SGR 0418+5729 on 2009-08-16, using the ACAM imager mounted at the 4.2 m William Herschel Telescope on La Palma. Observations of a nearby field containing SDSS calibrated stars were obtained for the absolute photometric calibration while astrometry was performed against 2MASS sources, resulting in an accuracy of ~0.1" on both RA and Dec.
No source is detected within the 95% confidence error-circle reported by Woods et al. (Atel #2159) down to a limit of r=24. PSF photometry reveals that the nearest object is detected at a magnitude r = 22.7 +/- 0.1 and center coordinates RA=04:18:34.0, Dec=57:32:23.5. This source is consistent with the near-infrared source reported by Wachter et al. (Atel #2164) but given its ~1.37" distance from the Chandra HRC position (which is boresight corrected using the same 2MASS astrometric frame used here) is not expected to be a viable counterpart.
Optical r-band image of the field near SGR0418+5729
