A DESGW Search for the Electromagnetic Counterpart to the LIGO/Virgo Gravitational Wave Binary Neutron Star Merger Candidate S190510g

Understand

We present the results from a search for the electromagnetic counterpart of the LIGO/Virgo event S190510g using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam).

• S190510g is a binary neutron star (BNS) merger candidate of moderate significance detected at a distance of 227$\pm$92 Mpc and localized within an area of 31 (1166) square degrees at 50\% (90\%) confidence.
• While this event was later classified as likely non-astrophysical in nature within 30 hours of the event, our short latency search and discovery pipeline identified 11 counterpart candidates, all of which appear consistent with supernovae following offline analysis and spectroscopy by other instruments.
• Later reprocessing of the images enabled the recovery of 6 more candidates.