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HETE J1900.1-2455 Optical Counterpart

ATel #526; Derek B. Fox (Caltech)
on 19 Jun 2005; 04:34 UT
Distributed as an Instant Email Notice Transients
Credential Certification: Derek B. Fox (derekfox@astro.caltech.edu)

Subjects: Infra-Red, Optical, X-ray, Binary, Neutron Star, Transient, Pulsar

Referred to by ATel #: 530, 533, 538, 543, 1090

I have observed the localization of the HETE transient HETE J1900.5-2455 (Vanderspek et al., ATEL #516), which has been identified as a 2.65-ms X-ray pulsar (Morgan, Kaaret & Vanderspek, ATEL #523), with the Robotic Palomar 60-inch Telescope, in five 120-s R-band and five 120-s i-band exposures extending from 07:27 to 07:57 UT on 18 June 2005. Comparison of these images to the Digitized Sky Survey reveals the presence of a single new or brightened object within the localization region, at coordinates RA 19:00:08.65, Dec -24:55:13.7 (J2000), with estimated coordinate uncertainty of 0.2". The brightness of the counterpart, by reference to the USNO B-1.0 catalog, is estimated to be to be R ~ 18.4 mag. We tentatively identify this object as the optical counterpart of HETE J1900.1-2455.

Images and a finding chart for the candidate may be found at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~derekfox/hetej1900.1-2455/.