GCN Circular 21552
Subject
LIGO/Virgo G298048: Gemini-South Near-Infrared Photometry of the Optical Transient Candidate
Date
2017-08-18T08:00:58Z (7 years ago)
From
Leo Singer at NASA/GSFC <leo.p.singer@nasa.gov>
L. P. Singer (NASA/GSFC), R. Lau (Caltech), M. M. Kasliwal (Caltech),
D. Cook (Caltech), S. Bradley Cenko (NASA/GSFC), J. Cannizzo (NASA/GSFC),
S. Nissanke (RU), and I. Arcavi (UCSB/Las Cumbres Obs) report on behalf of
the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH)
collaboration:
On 2017 Aug 18.06 UT, we obtained near-infrared observations with the
FLAMINGOS-2 instrument on Gemini-South of the field of the optical
transient candidate SSS17a (Coulter et al., GCN 21529; Allam et al., GCN
21530; Yang et al., GCN 21531, Melandri et al., GCN 21532; etc.) that was
reported in connection with the LIGO/Virgo candidate G298048 (LVC, GCNs
21509, 21510, 21513).
We obtained 230 s of imaging in K_s band. A source is clearly visible at a
position that is consistent with the previously reported optical
transient. Calibrating to the 2MASS Point Source Catalog, we measure a
K_s-band magnitude of 16.9 +/- 0.2 (Vega).
In addition to the optical transient, we also obtained K_s band imaging of
two of the 13 galaxies in the Census of the Local Universe (CLU)
cross-match with the BAYESTAR face-on localization (Cook et al., GCN
21521). We plan to observe the remaining galaxies over the coming nights.
We thank Gemini Observatory for rapidly reviewing and awarding us
directors' discretionary time under which these observations were taken.
We thank H. Kim and K. Silva, and the rest of the Gemini-South staff, for
promptly executing these observations.