The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society (천문학회보)

The Korean Astronomical Society (한국천문학회)
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AT2018cow : Photometric Analysis of Fast-evolving, Luminous and Bluish Transient

  • Paek, Gregory SungHak (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Im, Myungshin (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Choi, Changsu (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Lim, Gu (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kim, Sophia (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Paek, Insu (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Hwang, Sungyong (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kim, Taewoo (National Youth Space Center)
  • Published : 2018.10.10
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Abstract

On June 16 AT2018cow (ATLAS 18qqn) was discovered as a bright and fast-evolving transient in nearby universe z ~ 0.01. It brightened by more than 4 mag within a day, and its light curve was decayed rapidly and has a high luminous peak which is more luminous than most of core-collapse supernova. It also overall showed a blue color in an unprecedented case of transients. There have been attempts to explain this behavior with existing models, but most of them have been insufficient except for one - tidal disruption by intermediate-mass black hole. We began to monitor this transient from about 4 days after the discovery until August 21 in the optical bands with 1m-class telescopes over the world. Here, we present a light curve of AT2018cow in the B, V, R and I bands, and analyze its photometric properties and compare to other transients and models.

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