{
  "circularId": 44194,
  "subject": "EP260324A / AT 2026hir: Spectroscopic Observations with the Next Generation Palomar Spectrograph",
  "submittedHow": "web",
  "createdOn": 1775174629568,
  "submitter": "Robert David Stein at JSI <rdstein@umd.edu>",
  "eventId": "EP260324a",
  "format": "text/plain",
  "body": "Robert Stein (UMD/JSI/NASA GSFC), Kaustav Das (Caltech), Christoffer Fremling (Caltech), Tomas Ahumada (NOIRLab), Akash Anumarlapudi (UNC CH), Ryan Chornock (UC Berkeley),Michael C. Davis (UMN), K-Ryan Hinds (Caltech), Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech), Jillian Rastinejad (UMD), Gokul Srinivasaragavan (UMD) and Yuhan Yao (UC Berkeley) report, on behalf of the ZTF collaboration:\n\nWe observed AT2026hir/ZTF26aapviim, the optical counterpart (Anumarlapudi et al, GCN #44120) to EP260324A (Wu et al., ATEL #17728), with the Next Generation Palomar Spectrograph (NGPS; AstroNote 2024-340) on the Palomar 5.1m Hale Telescope (P200). Our observations began on 2026-03-27T03:51:37 (~3 days after the EP trigger), and data were reduced using the standard NGPS pipeline.\n\nThe spectrum was extremely blue, as also noted by Zhu et al. (Astronote #2026-87). From our spectrum, in addition to the continuum, we see an excess that would be consistent with broad He II with a velocity of ~15000 km / s. However, we have not performed host galaxy subtraction, and we caution that the SNR is insufficient to be certain whether this broad feature is real.\n\nIn any case, given the nuclear location (GCN #44120) and blue spectrum which is either featureless or has broad He, our observations would be consistent with a TDE-F or TDE-He classification for this source. However, we plan for and encourage additional multi-wavelength observations to secure the classification. The transient is bright (mg=17.3 in the latest ZTF data), so remains accessible to a wide variety of ground-based telescopes.\n"
}