Journal article

SCAT uncovers ATLAS’s first tidal disruption event ATLAS18mlw: a faint and fast TDE in a quiescent Balmer strong Galaxy

JT Hinkle, MA Tucker, BJ Shappee, TWS Holoien, PJ Vallely, T de Jaeger, K Auchettl, G Aldering, C Ashall, DD Desai, A Do, AV Payne, JL Tonry

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Published : 2023

Abstract

We present the discovery that ATLAS18mlw was a tidal disruption event (TDE) in the galaxy WISEA J073544.83+663717.3, at a luminosity distance of 334 Mpc. Initially discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on 2018 March 17.3, the TDE nature of the transient was uncovered only recently with the re-reduction of a SuperNova Integral Field Spectrograph (SNIFS) spectrum. This spectrum, taken by the Spectral Classification of Astronomical Transients (SCAT) survey, shows a strong blue continuum and a broad H α emission line. Here, we present roughly 6 yr of optical survey photometry beginning before the TDE to constrain active galactic nucleus activity, optical spectro..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by NASA


Awarded by DOE CSGF


Awarded by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship - Space Telescope Science Institute


Awarded by NSF


Awarded by Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy


Awarded by University of Hawaii's ATLAS project - NASA


Awarded by Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D)


Funding Acknowledgements

JTH and this work was supported by NASA award 80NSSC21K0136. MAT acknowledges support from the DOE CSGF through grant DE-SC0019323. Support for TW-SH was provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF251458.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. BJS is supported by NSF grants AST-1908952, AST-1920392, AST1911074, and NASA award 80NSSC19K1717. Support for GA was provided by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DEAC025CH11231 This work used data from the University of Hawaii's ATLAS project, funded through NASA grants NN12AR55G, 80NSSC18K0284, and 80NSSC18K1575, with contributions from the Queen's University Belfast, STScI, the South African Astro- nomical Observatory, and the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Chile. This paper includes data collected by the TESS mission, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission directorate. 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.