Observations of the First Electromagnetic Counterpart to a Gravitational-wave Source by the TOROS Collaboration Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We present the results of prompt optical follow-up of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational-wave event GW170817 by the Transient Optical Robotic Observatory of the South Collaboration. We detected highly significant dimming in the light curves of the counterpart (g = 0.17 0.03 mag, r = 0.14 0.02 mag, i = 0.10 0.03 mag) over the course of only 80 minutes of observations obtained 35 hr after the trigger with the T80-South telescope. A second epoch of observations, obtained 59 hr after the event with the EABA 1.5 m telescope, confirms the fast fading nature of the transient. The observed colors of the counterpart suggest that this event was a "blue kilonova" relatively free of lanthanides.

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS

altmetric score

  • 53.58

author list (cited authors)

  • Diaz, M. C., Macri, L. M., Garcia Lambas, D., Mendes de Oliveira, C., Nilo Castellon, J. L., Ribeiro, T., ... Zadrozny, A.

citation count

  • 87

complete list of authors

  • Díaz, MC||Macri, LM||Lambas, D Garcia||Oliveira, C Mendes de||Castellón, JL Nilo||Ribeiro, T||Sánchez, B||Schoenell, W||Abramo, LR||Akras, S||Alcaniz, JS||Artola, R||Beroiz, M||Bonoli, S||Cabral, J||Camuccio, R||Castillo, M||Chavushyan, V||Coelho, P||Colazo, C||Costa-Duarte, MV||Larenas, H Cuevas||DePoy, DL||Romero, M Domínguez||Dultzin, D||Fernández, D||García, J||Girardini, C||Gonçalves, DR||Gonçalves, TS||Gurovich, S||Jiménez-Teja, Y||Kanaan, A||Lares, M||Lopes de Oliveira, R||López-Cruz, O||Marshall, JL||Melia, R||Molino, A||Padilla, N||Peñuela, T||Placco, VM||Quiñones, C||Rivera, A Ramírez||Renzi, V||Riguccini, L||Ríos-López, E||Rodriguez, H||Sampedro, L||Schneiter, M||Sodré, L||Starck, M||Torres-Flores, S||Tornatore, M||Zadrożny, A

publication date

  • October 2017