GCN Circular 41579

Subject

EP250828a: Optical upper limit with Kinder observations

Event

EP250828a

Date

2025-08-28T16:27:20Z (a month ago)

From

Amar Aryan at National Central University, Institute of Astronomy (NCUIA) <amararyan941@gmail.com>

Via

Web form

A. Aryan, C.-S. Lin (both NCU), Y. J. Yang (NYUAD), A. K. H. Kong (NTHU), T.-W. Chen (NCU), J. Gillanders (Oxford), S. J. Smartt (Oxford/QUB), Y.-H. Lee, A. Sankar. K, Y.-C. Pan, C.-C. Ngeow, M.-H. Lee, C.-H. Lai, W.-J. Hou, H.-C. Lin, H.-Y. Hsiao, J.-K. Guo (all NCU), S. Yang, Z. N. Wang, L. L. Fan, G. H. Sun (all HNAS), H.-W. Lin (UMich), H. F. Stevance, S. Srivastav, L. Rhodes (all Oxford), M. Nicholl, M. Fulton, T. Moore, K. W. Smith, C. Angus, A. Aamer (all QUB), A. Schultz and M. Huber (both IfA, Hawaii) report: 

We observed the field of the fast X-ray transient EP250828a (Liu et al., GCN 41574Loading...
 
 ) using the 1m LOT at Lulin Observatory in Taiwan as part of the Kinder collaboration (Chen & Yang et al., 2025, ApJ, 983, 86). The first LOT epoch of observations started at 13:06 UTC on the 28th of August 2025 (MJD 60915.546), 5.56 hr after the EP WXT trigger. 

We utilized the astroalign (Beroiz et al. 2020, A&C, 32, 100384) and astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2022, ApJ, 935, 167) packages to align and stack the individual frames. We utilized the Python-based package AutoPhOT (Brennan & Fraser, 2022, A&A, 667, A62) to perform template subtraction with the DESI Legacy Survey (Dey et al. 2019, AJ 157, 168) DR10 image using the 'hotpants' (Becker A., 2015, ascl.soft. ascl:1504.004) algorithm. In the stacked as well as in the difference image, we do not find any evidence of a new and uncataloged optical counterpart candidate within the 20 arcseconds error circle of EP-FXT localization.

Moreover, we further utilized AutoPhOT to perform the PSF photometry. The details of the observations and the measured 3-sigma upper limit (in the AB system) are as follows:

Telescope | Filter | MJD (start) | t-t0 (hr | Exposure (s) | Magnitude | avg. Seeing | med. Airmass
LOT | r | 60915.546 | 5.56 | 300  * 12 | >22.3 | 1".69 | 1.08

The absence of any associated optical counterpart down to 22.3 mag with the optical observations starting within the first 6 hours of its X-ray discovery aligns well with the 'Dark' nature of FXTs as proposed by Aryan et al. 2025, arXiv:2504.21096Loading...
 
 .

The presented magnitude is calibrated using the field stars from the PanStarrs1 catalog and is not corrected for the expected Galactic foreground extinction of A_r = 0.28 mag in the direction of the transient (Schlafly & Finkbeiner 2011).