GCN Circular 27997

The IceCube Collaboration (http://icecube.wisc.edu/) reports:

On 2020-06-20 at 03:03:32.282 UT IceCube detected a track-like event with a moderate probability of being of astrophysical origin. The event was selected by the ICECUBE_Astrotrack_Bronze alert stream. The threshold astrophysical neutrino purity for Bronze alerts is 30%. This alert has an estimated false alarm rate of 2.321 events per year due to atmospheric backgrounds. The IceCube detector was in a normal operating state at the time of detection.

After the initial automated alert (https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/notices_amon_g_b/134207_33533447.amon), more sophisticated reconstruction algorithms have been applied offline, with the direction refined to:

Date: 2020-06-20
Time:  03:03:32.28 UT
RA: 162.11 (+0.64 -0.95 deg  90% PSF containment) J2000
Dec: 11.95 (+0.63 -0.48  deg 90% PSF containment) J2000

We encourage follow-up by ground and space-based instruments to help identify a possible astrophysical source for the candidate neutrino.

There are no Fermi 4FGL or 3FHL catalog sources in the 90% uncertainty region. The nearest gamma-ray source in either catalog is 4FGL J1041.0+1342  at RA: 160.27 deg, Dec: 13.71 deg (J2000), 2.51 deg away from the best-fit event position.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a cubic-kilometer neutrino detector operating at the geographic South Pole, Antarctica. The IceCube realtime alert point of contact can be reached at roc@icecube.wisc.edu