Performance of the 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope tested in two fields at high and low ecliptic and galactic latitudes

TL;DR

This study evaluates the 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope's ability to detect and classify transients across different sky regions, demonstrating its effectiveness in asteroid detection and transient discovery.

Contribution

It provides the first analysis of ILMT's transient detection capabilities at various ecliptic and galactic latitudes, including a new transient discovery and asteroid cataloging.

Findings

Detected over 500 transient candidates at low latitudes.

Identified 504 known asteroids and one new transient, AT 2024fxn.

Compared asteroid observations across multiple spectral bands.

Abstract

The 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) offers a unique opportunity to detect transients in a narrow strip of sky. We explore ILMT's potential to detect astrometric and photometric transients at various ecliptic and galactic latitudes. We inspected CCD frames observed at both low and high ecliptic and galactic latitudes during the commissioning phase and the November 2023 - May 2024 observation cycle, respectively. We analysed these images using both visual inspection and the ILMT's transient detection and candidate classification pipeline. In the low ecliptic and galactic latitude field, we detected more than 500 transient candidates. We cross-matched these with the Minor Planet Checker (MPC) database, identifying 504 catalogued asteroids, all with predicted V-magnitudes brighter than 24 mag, representing a total of 152 distinct asteroids. We performed the same steps on the high ecliptic and galactic latitude field, detecting 30 MPC-catalogued asteroids, and one newly discovered photometric transient, named AT 2024fxn. We present the positions, trajectories, and magnitudes of the detected asteroids observed in the SDSS g', r', and i' spectral bands and compare results from both fields. We explore the lightcurve of AT 2024fxn, which shows partial compatibility with a supernova (SN) hypothesis, while the data invites further insights.