iPTF search for an optical counterpart to gravitational-wave transient GW150914
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- California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- Texas Tech Univ., Lubbock, TX (United States)
- Inter-Univ. Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune (India)
- Stockholm Univ., Stockholm (Sweden)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM (United States)
- Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot (Israel)
- Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., Palo Alto, CA (United States)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen (Denmark)
- San Diego State Univ., San Diego, CA (United States); The Univ. of Tokyo, Chiba (Japan)
- Max Planck Institute for Astonomy, Heidelberg (Germany)
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States)
The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) autonomously responded to and promptly tiled the error region of the first gravitational-wave event GW150914 to search for an optical counterpart. Only a small fraction of the total localized region was immediately visible in the northern night sky, due both to Sun-angle and elevation constraints. Here, we report on the transient candidates identified and rapid follow-up undertaken to determine the nature of each candidate. Even in the small area imaged of 126 deg2, after extensive filtering, eight candidates were deemed worthy of additional follow-up. Within two hours, all eight were spectroscopically classified by the Keck II telescope. Curiously, even though such events are rare, one of our candidates was a superluminous supernova. We obtained radio data with the Jansky Very Large Array and X-ray follow-up with the Swift satellite for this transient. None of our candidates appear to be associated with the gravitational-wave trigger, which is unsurprising given that GW150914 came from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes. In conclusion, this end-to-end discovery and follow-up campaign bodes well for future searches in this post-detection era of gravitational waves.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 1393054
- Journal Information:
- The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online), Vol. 824, Issue 2; ISSN 2041-8213
- Publisher:
- Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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