2011/03/07 by V. S. Dhillon, E. F. Keane, T. R. Marsh +10 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.SR #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18663.x
6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2011/03/07 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27
The Rotating RAdio Transient (RRAT) J1819-1458 exhibits ~3 ms bursts in the radio every ~3 min, implying that it is visible for only ~1 per day. Assuming that the optical light behaves in a similar manner, long exposures of the field would be relatively insensitive due to the accumulation of sky photons. A much better way of detecting optical emission from J1819-1458 would then be to observe with a high-speed optical camera simultaneously with radio observations, and co-add only those optical frames coincident with the dispersion-corrected radio bursts. We present the results of such a search, using simultaneous ULTRACAM and Lovell Telescope observations. We find no evidence for optical bursts in J1819-1458 at magnitudes brighter than i'=19.3 (5-sigma limit). This is nearly 3 magnitudes fainter than the previous burst limit, which had no simultaneous radio observations.