GCN Circular 14374
Subject
GRB 130408A: SMARTS optical/IR afterglow observations
Event
Date
2013-04-12T20:46:37Z (13 years ago)
From
Bethany Cobb at GWU <bcobb@gwu.edu>
B. E. Cobb (GWU), reports:
Using the ANDICAM instrument on the 1.3m telescope at CTIO, we
obtained optical/IR imaging of the error region of GRB 130408A
(GCN 14361, Lien et al.) over several epochs (with mid-exposure
times of 2013-04-09 00:30 UT, 02:15 UT, 03:41 UT and 2013-04-11
02:24 UT). For each epoch, several dithered images were obtained with
total summed exposure times of 15 min in V and I and 12 min in J
and K. For the final epoch, total exposure times were 36 min in I
and 30 min in J.
The fading afterglow of GRB 130408A (e.g. GCN 14362, Melandri et al.;
GCN 14363, Siegel et al.; GCN 14364, Sudilovsky et al.) was detected
with the following magnitudes (or 3-sigma limits):
mid-exposure
time
(hours) I mag J mag K mag
2.64611 18.8 +/- 0.1 17.8 +/- 0.1 > 16.1
4.38444 19.6 +/- 0.1 18.6 +/- 0.2 16.8 +/- 0.2
5.82472 20.0 +/- 0.1 18.6 +/- 0.2 > 17.2
52.53694 > 21.5 > 19.6 ...
(Optical photometry is calibrated against USNO-B1.0 stars
and IR photometry is calibrated against 2MASS stars in the field.)
Between about 2.6 hrs and 5.8 hrs post-burst, the GRB afterglow fades
with a decay rate of approximately alpha = 1.4 (where afterglow flux is
proportional to t^-alpha).