AstroNote 2020-60

Following the detection of the fast transient AT2020dih in ATLAS + ZTF
data (see Smartt et al. Astronote 2020-55), as well as a custom GROWTH
Marshal filter designed to search for transients in the vicinity of
nearby galaxies (De et al. Astronote 2019-124), we triggered our
target of opportunity program on the Gemini North telescope (PI:
Miller) for young and fast evolving transients. Observations were
taken on UT 2020-03-08 in R400 and B600 gratings, dithered in
wavelength to cover chip gaps. The reduced spectrum shows intermediate
width (~1000 km/s) emission lines of the Balmer series, Ca II and O I
at the redshift of the nearby Messier 94 galaxy. The spectrum and the
fast light curve peaking at M = -9 are consistent with a classical
nova outburst in M94.

We thank the Gemini staff for scheduling these rapid Target of
Opportunity observations. ZTF is a project led by PI S. R. Kulkarni at
Caltech (see ATEL #11266), and includes IPAC; WIS, Israel; OKC,
Sweden; JSI/UMd, USA; UW,USA; DESY, Germany; NRC, Taiwan; UW
Milwaukee, USA and LANL USA. ZTF acknowledges the generous support of
the NSF under AST MSIP Grant No 1440341. Alert distribution service
provided by DIRAC@UW. Alert filtering is being undertaken by the
GROWTH marshal system, supported by NSF PIRE grant 1545949.