The nature of radio transients

Details The nature of radio transients The nature of radio transients

Jul 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007hst..prop11104g&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #11104. Cycle 16

Computer Science

Scientific paper

We have conducted the first ever blind, wide-field survey for radio transients Levinson et al. 2002; Gal-Yam et al. 2006. We have discovered four radio transients and explored their nature using radio and optical follow-up observations. One is a known pulsar, one is a z~0.1 AGN, and one is most probably an optically obscured radio supernova SN in the nearby galaxy NGC 4216 the first such event to be discovered by a wide field radio survey. The last source appears not to be associated with a bright host galaxy to a limit of R < 24.5 mag. We request 4 orbits of WFPC2 F606W imaging to check whether we can establish an association between this radio transient and any of three nearby faint resolved galaxies we have detected from the ground. If the source is associated with any of these galaxies it would represent a new type of extra-galactic radio bursts, more luminous than, e.g., radio afterglows of gamma-ray bursts. Alternatively, ruling out an association with these galaxies would disfavor an extra-galactic nature of this object, and suggest instead that this is a radio outburst of a faint Galactic compact object, probably a new type of radio-flaring neutron star. If this is the case, the high luminosity 9 mJy and relatively high galactic latitude 33 degrees of this source may indicate it is relatively nearby. This single source represents a large population comparable in sky density to AGN, pulsars, and radio SNe and thus merits intensive study. A modest investment of HST time, leveraged by massive ground-based radio and optical efforts, will allow us to identify a new class of radio sources, and complete a census of the variable radio sky down to ~6 mJy, leaving no unidentifed objects. This result can be directly scaled to predict the number and type of transient sources expected to be detected by future surveys with the next generation radio arrays, such as ATA and SKA.Since our science critically requires HST's spatial resolution rather than sensitivity it is perfectly suited to be carried out with WFPC2.;

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