The Palomar Transient Factory discovery of PTF 10vgv, a broad-line Type Ic supernova

ATel #2914; A. Corsi (Caltech), S. B. Cenko (UC Berkeley), E. O. Ofek (Caltech), A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute), M. M. Kasliwal (Caltech), D. A. Frail (NRAO), S. R. Kulkarni (Caltech), A. V. Filippenko (UC Berkeley), J. M. Silverman (UC Berkeley), J. Choi (UC Berkeley), on behalf of the Core-Collapse working group of the Palomar Transient Factory
on 9 Oct 2010; 23:48 UT
Credential Certification: Eran Ofek (eran@wise.tau.ac.il)

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The Palomar Transient Factory (ATEL#1964; http://www.astro.caltech.edu/ptf/ ) reports the discovery of a new supernova, PTF 10vgv, on 2010 Sep 14 UT, at magnitude R=19.8 mag (calibrated with respect to the USNO-B1 catalog). The SN was not seen in previous images of the same field taken on and before 2010 Sep. 12 down to a limiting magnitude of R>20.6 mag. The SN coordinates are RA=22:16:01.17 Dec=+40:52:03.3 (J2000), and it is located at an angular distance of about 5" from the SDSS galaxy J221601.54+405206.5. The SN reached its peak R-band luminosity (approximately R=16 mag), around 2010 Sep. 24. A spectrum of the source was obtained using the KAST spectrograph mounted on the 3m telescope at Lick Observatory on 2010 Oct. 1, revealing the supernova was a broad-line type Ic event at a redshift of z=0.015. The superfit program (Howell et al. 2005, ApJ, 634, 1190) finds a good match to a spectrum of SN 2002ap (Gal-Yam, Ofek & Shemmer 2002, MNRAS, 332, L73) at 15 days post-peak. A multi-wavelength follow-up campaign is on-going.