[vsnet-grb-info 22170] LIGO/Virgo S190426c - ePESSTO+ spectrum of candidate PS19qu

[GCN Circulars]

TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  24269
SUBJECT: LIGO/Virgo S190426c - ePESSTO+ spectrum of candidate PS19qu
DATE:    19/04/27 07:52:52 GMT
FROM:    Phil Short at Royal Observatory of Edinburgh  <pshort at roe.ac.uk>

P. Short, M. Nicholl (Edinburgh), J. Anderson (ESO), T.-W. Chen (MPE), C. Inserra (Cardiff), O. Yaron (Weizmann), D. R. Young (QUB), C. Angus, M. Pursiainen, P. Wiseman (Southampton), S. Taubenberger (MPA), M. Gromadzki (Warsaw) on behalf of the ePESSTO+ collaboration

We obtained a spectrum of the transient PS19qu discovered by Pan-STARRS (Smith et al., GCN 24262)  during follow-up of the gravitational wave trigger S190426z (GCN 24168) , under the advanced Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey for Transient Objects (ePESSTO+; see Smartt et al. 2015, A&A, 579, 40 http://www.pessto.org). The observations were performed on the ESO New Technology Telescope at La Silla with the EFOSC2 instrument.

The spectrum is host-galaxy dominated. It shows a star-forming galaxy at z=0.183, significantly further away than the peak of the distance posterior from the GW sky map (GCN 24168). At this redshift, the absolute magnitude implied by the Pan-STARRS detection is -18.9 mag.