IceCube-260504A
GCN Circular 44502
The IceCube Collaboration (http://icecube.wisc.edu/) reports:
IceCube has performed a search [1] for additional track-like muon neutrino events arriving from the direction of IceCube-260504A (https://gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/44464) in a time range of 1000 seconds centered on the alert event time (2026-05-04 21:03:00.958 UTC to 2026-05-04 21:19:40.958 UTC) during which IceCube was collecting good quality data. Excluding the event that prompted the alert, zero track-like events are found within the 90% containment region of IceCube-260504A. We report a p-value of 1.00 in this time window. IceCube’s sensitivity to neutrino point sources with an E^-2.5 spectrum, expressed as E^2 dN/dE evaluated at 1 TeV, is 1.6e-01 GeV cm^-2 within the 90% spatial containment region of IceCube-260504A in a 1000 second time window. 90% of events IceCube would detect from a source at this declination with an E^-2.5 spectrum have energies in the approximate energy range between 2e+02 GeV and 5e+04 GeV.
A subsequent search was performed including 2 days of data centered on the alert event time (2026-05-03 21:11:20.958 UTC to 2026-05-05 21:11:20.958 UTC). In this case, we report a p-value of 1.00, consistent with no significant excess of track events. IceCube’s sensitivity to neutrino point sources with an E^-2.5 spectrum, expressed as E^2 dN/dE evaluated at 1 TeV, ranges from 1.9e-01 to 2.0e-01 GeV cm^-2 within the 90% spatial containment region of IceCube-260504A in a 2 day time window.
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.
[1] IceCube Collaboration, R. Abbasi et al., ApJ 910 4 (2021)
GCN Circular 44472
L. Pfeiffer (Univ. of Wuerzburg), S. Buson (DESY, Univ. of Wuerzburg) and S. Garrappa (Weizmann Institute of Science) on behalf of the Fermi-LAT collaboration:
We report an analysis of observations of the vicinity of the high-energy IC260504A neutrino event (GCN 44464) with all-sky survey data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT), on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The IceCube event was detected on 2026-05-04 21:11:20.90 UTC (T0) with J2000 position RA = 246.99 (+0.86, -0.80) deg, Decl. = 54.87 (+0.46, -0.47) deg 90% PSF containment. One cataloged >100 MeV gamma-ray source is located within the 90% IC260504A localization error, at a distance of roughly 0.38 deg (4FGL-DR4; The Fourth Fermi-LAT catalog Data Release 4, The Fermi-LAT collaboration 2023, arXiv:2307.12546). This is the object 4FGL J1626.0+5436 associated with 87GB 162528.4+544848. Based on a preliminary analysis of the LAT data over the timescale of 1-day and 1-month prior to T0, this object is not significantly detected at gamma-rays.
We searched for the existence of intermediate (days to years) timescale emission from a new gamma-ray transient source. Preliminary analysis indicates no significant (>5sigma) new excess emission (> 100 MeV) within the IC260504A 90% confidence localization. Assuming a power-law spectrum (photon index = 2.0 fixed) for a point source at the IC260504A best-fit position, the >100 MeV flux upper limit (95% confidence) is < 1.3e-10 ph cm^-2 s^-1 for ~17-years (2008-08-04 / T0), <4.6e-09 (<4.7e-08) ph cm^-2 s^-1 for a 1-month (1-day) integration time before T0.
Since Fermi normally operates in an all-sky scanning mode, regular monitoring of this source will continue. For this source the Fermi-LAT contact person is Leonard Pfeiffer (leonard.pfeiffer at uni-wuerzburg.de).
The Fermi LAT is a pair conversion telescope designed to cover the energy band from 20 MeV to greater than 300 GeV. It is the product of an international collaboration between NASA and DOE in the U.S. and many scientific institutions across France, Italy, Japan and Sweden.
GCN Circular 44464
The IceCube Collaboration (http://icecube.wisc.edu/) reports:
On 26-05-04 at 21:11:20.90 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 average astrophysical neutrino purity for Bronze alerts is 30%.
This alert has an estimated false alarm rate of 0.504 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/142545_58544625.amon), more sophisticated reconstruction algorithms have been applied offline, with the direction refined to:
Date: 26-05-04
Time: 21:11:20.90 UT
RA: 246.99 (+0.86/-0.80 deg 90% PSF containment) J2000
Dec: 54.87 (+0.46/-0.47 deg 90% PSF containment) J2000
One gamma-ray source from the Fermi 4FGL-DR4 catalog is located within the 90% uncertainty region of this event: 4FGL J1626.0+5436 , at RA = 246.51° and Dec = 54.61° (J2000), with an angular separation of 0.38° from the best-fit event position.
As announced in GCN Circular 43419 (https://gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/43419), IceCube alert notices for high-energy track alerts are now also streamed via Kafka.
IceCube Gold/Bronze track alerts are available on the Kafka topic 'gcn.notices.icecube.gold_bronze_track_alerts'.
The probability distribution of the true neutrino direction, allowing the extraction of precise 90% containment regions around the best-fit direction, is now available for revised reconstruction of high-energy track alerts.
The corresponding sky map is distributed as a FITS file and follows the explicit naming convention IceCube-YYMMDDX, where YYMMDD indicates the date of the event and X is a letter distinguishing multiple alerts on the same day. The download link is provided through the GCN schema distributed via Kafka.
Detailed documentation describing the alert distribution, schemas, and probability maps is available at: https://gcn.nasa.gov/missions/icecube.
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