Preparing for Gaia searches for optical counterparts of gravitational wave events during O4

Author:

Biswas Sumedha1ORCID,Kostrzewa-Rutkowska Zuzanna2,Jonker Peter G13ORCID,Vreeswijk Paul1,Eappachen Deepak13ORCID,Groot Paul J145,Hodgkin Simon6,Yoldas Abdullah6,Rixon Guy6,Harrison Diana67,van Leeuwen M6,Evans Dafydd6

Affiliation:

1. Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University , PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen , The Netherlands

2. Leiden Observatory, Leiden University , PO Box 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden , the Netherlands

3. SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research , Nie ls Bohrweg 4, 2333 CA Leiden , the Netherlands

4. South African Astronomical Observatory , PO Box 9, Observatory, 7935 Cape Town , South Africa

5. Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town , Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701 , South Africa

6. Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge , Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA , UK

7. Kavli Institute for Cosmology Cambridge, Institute of Astronomy , Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA , UK

Abstract

ABSTRACT The discovery of gravitational wave (GW) events and the detection of electromagnetic counterparts from GW170817 has started the era of multimessenger GW astronomy. The field has been developing rapidly, and in this paper, we discuss the preparation for detecting these events with ESA’s Gaia satellite, during the 4th observing run of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA (LVK) collaboration that has started on 2023 May 24. Gaia is contributing to the search for GW counterparts by a new transient detection pipeline called GaiaX. In GaiaX, a new source appearing in the field of view of only one of the two telescopes on-board Gaia is sufficient to send out an alert on the possible detection of a new transient. Ahead of O4, an experiment was conducted over a period of about two months. During the two weeks around New Moon in this period of time, the MeerLICHT (ML) telescope located in South Africa tried (weather permitting) to observe the same region of the sky as Gaia within 10 min. Any GaiaX detected transient was published publicly. ML and Gaia have similar limiting magnitudes for typical seeing conditions at ML. At the end of the experiment, we had 11 861 GaiaX candidate transients and 15 806 ML candidate transients, which we further analysed and the results of which are presented in this paper. Finally, we discuss the possibility and capabilities of Gaia contributing to the search for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events during O4 through the GaiaX detection and alert procedure.

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

Subject

Space and Planetary Science,Astronomy and Astrophysics

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