Published January 2019 | Version Accepted Version + Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Results of a systematic search for outburst events in 1.4 million galaxies

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 3. ROR icon Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  • 4. ROR icon Millennium Institute of Astrophysics
  • 5. ROR icon University of Arizona

Abstract

We present an analysis of 9 yr of Catalina Surveys optical photometry for 1.4 million spectroscopically confirmed SDSS galaxies. We find 717 outburst events that were not reported by ongoing transient surveys. These events have time-scales ranging from weeks to years. More than two-thirds of these new events are found in star-forming galaxies, while such galaxies only constitute ∼20 per cent of our sample. Based on the properties of the hosts and events, we find that almost all of the new events are likely to be associated with regular supernovae. However, a small number of long time-scale events are found among the galaxies containing AGNs. These events have similar properties to those recently found in the analyses of light curves of large samples of AGNs. Given the lack of such events among more than a million passive galaxies in the sample, we suggest that the long outbursts are associated with supermassive black holes or their environments.

Additional Information

© 2018 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Accepted 2018 September 28. Received 2018 August 17; in original form 2018 March 29. Published: 04 October 2018. CRTS, CSDR1, and CSDR2 are supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant NSF grants AST-1313422, AST-1413600, and AST-1518308. The CSS survey is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNG05GF22G issued through the Science Mission Directorate Near-Earth Objects Observations Program. AJD and MC acknowledge partial support by CONICYT's PCI program through grant DPI20140066. MC is additionally supported by the Ministry for the Economy, Development, and Tourism's Iniciativa Científica Milenio through grant IC 120009, awarded to the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics; by Proyecto Fondecyt Regular #1171273; and by Proyecto Basal PFB-06/2007. AllWISE makes use of data from WISE, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and NEOWISE, which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology. WISE and NEOWISE are funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Attached Files

Published - sty2673.pdf

Accepted Version - 1810.01448.pdf

Supplemental Material - sty2673_supplemental_files.zip

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
97305
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20190722-081423822

Related works

Funding

NSF
AST-1313422
NSF
AST-1413600
NSF
AST-1518308
NASA
NNG05GF22G
Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT)
DPI20140066
Iniciativa Científica Milenio del Ministerio de Economía, Fomento y Turismo
IC120009
Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT)
1171273
Basal-CATA
PFB-06/2007

Dates

Created
2019-07-22
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department