LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S240422ed: Magellan Detection of a Potential Electromagnetic Counterpart

report on behalf of the Carnegie Gravitational wave ElectroMagnetic follow-up (CGEM) and the One-Meter Two-Hemisphere (1M2H) collaborations: As part of our ongoing search for optical counterparts to the candidate gravitational wave event S240422ed (GCN 36236) using the 6.5m Magellan Clay telescope with the LDSS-3 imager (GCN 36244), we have detected an apparent transient source in an i-band image that is not present in archival Pan-STARRS images (Chambers et al., 2016). The transient is Mag24a 07:56:05.6 -22:53:54 J2000 We have queried both the Minor Planet Checker and Transient Name Server, neither of which returned a known object. We estimate the brightness of Mag24a is i = 23.3 mag at 20240423.98 UT. It is offset 2.1" west and 8.6" north from its apparent host galaxy, WISEA J075605.75-225400.0, which has a photometric redshift of z = 0.049 (Bilicki et al., 2014, ApJS, 210, 9), corresponding to 213 Mpc (i.e., within the current Bilby measured volume; GCN 36240). At this distance with a Milky Way extinction of A_i = 0.748 mag (Schlafly & Finkbeiner, 2011, ApJ, 737, 103) and no host-galaxy extinction, the absolute magnitude is M_i = -14.1 mag. At this distance, Mag24a is offset by 9.2 kpc from the assumed host galaxy in projection. We are undertaking additional observations at this time, and encourage additional follow-up observations. We thank Marcelo Mora, Povilas Palunas, and the rest of the LCO staff for making these observations possible.