GCN Circular 43210

Subject
EP251222a: GOTO optical upper limit
Event
EP251222a
Date
2025-12-23T08:03:47Z (3 days ago)
From
Amit Kumar at The Open University, UK <amitkundu515@gmail.com>
Via
Web form
A. Kumar, G. Ramsay, B. P. Gompertz, R. Starling, K. Ackley, M. J. Dyer, J. Lyman, K. Ulaczyk, S. Belkin, D. O'Neill, B. Godson, D. Steeghs, D. K. Galloway, V. Dhillon, P. O'Brien, K. Noysena, R. Kotak, R. P. Breton, L. K. Nuttall, and J. Casares report on behalf of the GOTO collaboration:


We report on observations with the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO; Steeghs et al. 2022; Dyer et al. 2024) in response to EP251222a (Huang et al., GCN 43200Loading...
 
 ). Two sets of targeted observations were performed by GOTO-North at 2025-12-22 22:19:38 UT and 2025-12-23 01:14:12 UT, corresponding to 7.0 and 9.9 hours post-trigger, respectively. Each observation consisted of 4x90 s exposures in the GOTO L-band (400-700 nm).


Images were processed immediately after acquisition using the GOTO pipeline. Difference imaging was performed using deeper template observations of the same pointings. Source candidates were initially filtered using a classifier (Killestein et al. 2021) and cross-matched against a variety of contextual and minor planet catalogues. 


We do not identify any new optical source within the EP/WXT localisation uncertainty region after the trigger time, down to a 5-sigma limiting magnitude for the two sets of observations of L >20.4 (AB) and L >20.5 (AB).


Magnitudes were calibrated using ATLAS-REFCAT2 (Tonry et al. 2018) and are not corrected for Galactic extinction.


GOTO (https://goto-observatory.org) is a network of telescopes that is principally funded by the STFC and operated at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Spain, and Siding Spring Observatory in NSW, Australia, on behalf of a consortium including the University of Warwick, Monash University, Armagh Observatory & Planetarium, the University of Leicester, the University of Sheffield, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), the University of Turku, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC).