GW190814 follow-up with the optical telescope MeerLICHT

Understand

The Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories detected a signal on 2019 August 14 during their third observing run, named GW190814.

• A large number of electromagnetic facilities conducted follow-up campaigns in the search for a possible counterpart to the gravitational wave event, which was made especially promising given the early source classification of a neutron star-black hole merger.We present the results of the GW follow-up campaign taken with the wide-field optical telescope MeerLICHT, located at the South African Astronomical Observatory Sutherland site.
• We use our results to constrain possible kilonova models.
• MeerLICHT observed more than 95% of the probability localisation each night for over a week in three optical bands (u,q,i) with our initial observations beginning almost 2 hours after the GW detection.