GCN Circular 13133
Subject
GRB 120327A: Gemini-South redshift
Date
2012-03-27T07:35:33Z (13 years ago)
From
Daniel Perley at Caltech <dperley@astro.caltech.edu>
D. A. Perley (Caltech) and N. R. Tanvir (U. Leicester) report on behalf
of a larger collaboration:
On March 27 starting at 06:01 UT (186 minutes after the BAT trigger) we
began spectroscopic observations of the optical afterglow of GRB 120327A
(Sbarufatti et al., GCN 13123) using GMOS-South on the Gemini-South 8-m
telescope. We acquired four exposures of 800s each using the B600
grating, with wavelength coverage between 3865-6680 Angstroms.
In the reduced spectrum we identify a strong damped Lyman-alpha system
at z=2.81 as well as numerous narrow absorption lines corresponding to
(among others) CIV, CII, OI, SiII at the same redshift, as well as
possible Lyman-beta. We therefore identify this as the redshift of the
GRB.
We thank German Gimeno and the Gemini staff for prompt execution of the
observations.