SOAR/Goodman Spectroscopic Assessment of Candidate Counterparts of the LIGO-Virgo Event GW190814

Understand

On 2019 August 14 at 21:10:39 UTC, the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) detected a possible neutron star-black hole merger (NSBH), the first ever identified.

• An extensive search for an optical counterpart of this event, designated GW190814, was undertaken using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4m Victor M.
• Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.
• Target of Opportunity interrupts were issued on 8 separate nights to observe 11 candidates using the 4.1m Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope's Goodman High Throughput Spectrograph in order to assess whether any of these transients was likely to be an optical counterpart of the possible NSBH merger.