GCN Circular 1536

I. Burud, A. Fruchter, J. Rhoads, and A. Levan (STScI) report for the
larger GOSH (GRB Optical Studies with HST) collaboration:

We observed the field of GRB 020322 with STIS in open (50CCD) mode on
UT 2002 April 8 and on June 5.  The position of the
transient with respect to the STIS image was determined by performing
relative astrometry using the optical image of the transient from
Bloom et al.  (GCN 1296
Not found
 
 
).  The accuracy of the position translated
to the HST image is estimated to be 0.08 arcsec.

We see no evident OT, but at the position of the transient there is
an extended 27th magnitude galaxy which is likely to be the host.
The sum of the two epochs of observations is displayed at

http://www.stsci.edu/~fruchter/GRB/020322

When subtracting the images from the two epochs no residual signal is
detected above 3 sigma near the position of the OT, giving a limiting
magnitude of 30.1 mags for any transient.

Based on the ground-based observations from Bloom et al. (GCN 1294
Not found
 
 
),
Greiner et al. (GCN 1298
Not found
 
 
), Hjorth et al. (GCN 1300
Not found
 
 
) and Williams et
al. (GCN 1307
Not found
 
 
) and the non-detection of the OT in the HST/STIS image
we conclude that the late time R-band decay of the OT must be steeper
than 2.0. A plot of all the data points can be found on the aforementioned
web page.

We thank J. Bloom and the Caltech GRB group for making their ground-based
data rapidly public (GCN1296
Not found
 
 
).