Journal article
A unicorn in monoceros: The 3 Mpdbldark companion to the bright, nearby red giant V723 Mon is a non-interacting, mass-gap black hole candidate
T Jayasinghe, KZ Stanek, TA Thompson, CS Kochanek, DM Rowan, PJ Vallely, KG Strassmeier, M Weber, JT Hinkle, FJ Hambsch, DV Martin, JL Prieto, T Pessi, D Huber, K Auchettl, LA Lopez, I Ilyin, C Badenes, AW Howard, H Isaacson Show all
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Published : 2021
Abstract
We report the discovery of the closest known black hole candidate as a binary companion to V723 Mon. V723 Mon is a nearby ($d\sim 460\, \rm pc$), bright (V 8.3 mag), evolved (Teff, giant 4440 K, and Lgiant 173 Lpdbl) red giant in a high mass function, f(M) = 1.72 ± 0.01 Mpdbl, nearly circular binary (P = 59.9 d, e 0). V723 Mon is a known variable star, previously classified as an eclipsing binary, but its All-Sky Automated Survey, Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope, and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite light curves are those of a nearly edge-on ellipsoidal variable. Detailed models of the light curves constrained by the period, radial velocities, and stellar temperature give ..
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Grants
Awarded by Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
Funding Acknowledgements
The ASAS-SN team at OSU is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through grant GBMF5490 to the Ohio State University, and NSF grant AST-1908570. TJ, KZS, and CSK are supported by NSF grants AST-1814440 and AST-1908570. TJ acknowledges support from the Ohio State Presidential Fellowship. TAT is supported in part by NASA grant 80NSSC20K0531. TAT acknowledges previous support from Scialog Scholar grant 24216 from the Research Corporation, from which this effort germinated. JTH is supported by NASA award 80NSSC21K0136. Support for JLP is provided in part by the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism's Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, MAS. DH acknowledges support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NSSC18K1585, 80NSSC19K0379), and the National Science Foundation (AST-1717000). CB acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation grant AST-1909022. Parts of this research were supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. STELLA and PEPSI were made possible by funding through the State of Brandenburg (MWFK) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through their Verbundforschung grants 05AL2BA1/3 and 05A08BAC. This research is based on observations made with the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, obtained from theMASTdata archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. This paper includes data collected with the TESS mission, obtained from the MAST data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.