A survey for fast transients in the Fornax Cluster of galaxies
Abstract
The luminosity gap between novae (M_R ≤ − 10) and supernovae (M_R ≥ − 14) has been well known since the pioneering research of Zwicky and Hubble. Nearby galaxy clusters and concentrations offer an excellent opportunity to search for explosions brighter than classical novae and fainter than supernovae. Here we present the results of a B-band survey of 23 member galaxies of the Fornax Cluster, performed at the Las Campanas 2.5 m Irénée du Pont telescope. Observations with a cadence of 32 minutes discovered no genuine fast transient to a limiting absolute magnitude of M_B = − 9.3 mag. We provide a detailed assessment of the transient detection efficiency and the resulting upper limits on the event rate as function of peak magnitude. Further, we discuss the discoveries of five previously unknown foreground variables which we identified as two flare stars, two W UMa-type eclipsing binaries and a candidate δ Scuti/SX Phe star.
Additional Information
© 2008 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2008 January 8; accepted 2008 April 25. We are grateful to Paul Price for providing his image subtraction code and to Carrol Wainwright for his contribution to the pipeline. We thank Mara Salvato, Mansi M. Kasliwal, and S. Bradley Cenko for discussion and constructive criticism. We thank the referee for his stimulating comments and suggestions. This work is based on in part on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, Chile. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the NASA. This work is supported in part by grants from the NSF and NASA. Facilities: Du Pont, NTTAttached Files
Published - RAUapj08.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 14184
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- CaltechAUTHORS:20090508-085155689
- NSF
- NASA
- Created
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2009-05-08Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)