GCN Circular 41594
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250818k: MeerKAT detection of an increase in radio flux from AT2025ulz
Date
2025-08-29T18:07:17Z (a month ago)
From
Gabriele Bruni at INAF <gabriele.bruni@inaf.it>
Via
Web form
G. Bruni [1], L. Piro [1], G. Gianfagna [1] and A. L. Thakur [1] report:
We re-observed the field of AT2025ulz (announced by Stein et al., GCN 41414), which is proposed as a candidate counterpart for the subthreshold GW event S250818k (LVK Collaboration, GCNs 41437, 41440) with the MeerKAT radio telescope under the program SCI-20241101-GB-01 (PI: Bruni) at 3 GHz (S4 band) starting on Aug 28, 14:20 UT (at 10 days post-trigger) for a total of 4 hours (3.23 hours on source). J1939-6342 was used for flux scale calibration, and J1609+2641 for phase referencing. Data was processed with the SARAO Science Data Processor (SDP) continuum pipeline. The image RMS was 5.3 uJy/beam.
We detect a clear flux increase in the radio emission with respect to the first epoch at 3.6 days post trigger (GCN 41500), with an integrated flux density of 157 +/- 9 uJy. The increment with respect to the first epoch is thus ~80 uJy.
Further MeerKAT observations are planned.
The MeerKAT telescope is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation.
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[1] INAF-IAPS