AstroNote 2025-223

2025qhf (ZTF25aaymnha)  was identified as a candidate Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) using the Neural Engine for Discovering Luminous Events (NEEDLE) classifier (Sheng et al. 2024), a machine-learning tool for identifying rare astronomical transients (TDEs and Superluminous Supernovae; SLSNe) from real-time alerts from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF; Bellm et al. 2019; Graham et al. 2019) streamed via the Lasair alert broker (Williams et al. 2024), with future application for Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time Survey. It is also identified and followed up as a TDE candidate by tdescore ML classifier (Stein et al. 2024).

2025qhf was initially flagged as an outlier candidate from NEEDLE given its slow rise and blue color with apparent magnitude g = 19.17 +/- 0.13 on 2025-07-10. Following closer visual inspection, the apparent nuclear location of the source (offset 0.47" N, 0.01" E from the galaxy centre), made 2025qhf a viable TDE candidate. 

AT2025qhf was classified by the SCAT collaboration (classification report) as a TDE H+He at z=0.08 on 2025-07-19. At a redshift of z=0.08, the current luminosity of TDE2025qhf is M=-18.88 +/- 0.07. The light curve appears to be still rising in the ZTF photometry (https://lasair-ztf.lsst.ac.uk/objects/ZTF25aaymnha/). This is the 10th confirmed NEEDLE-TDE event classified prior to maximum light. We encourage further follow-up of this event.