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GCN Circular 16302

Subject
GRB 140518A: RATIR Optical and NIR Observations
Date
2014-05-18T14:24:59Z (10 years ago)
From
Antonino Cucchiara at NASA/GSFC <antonino.cucchiara@nasa.gov>
A. Cucchiara (NASA/GSFC), Nat Butler (ASU), Alan M. Watson (UNAM), 
Alexander Kutyrev (GSFC), William H. Lee (UNAM), Michael G. Richer (UNAM), 
Chris Klein (UCB), Ori Fox (UCB), J. Xavier Prochaska (UCSC), Josh Bloom (UCB), 
Eleonora Troja (GSFC), Owen Littlejohns (ASU), Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz (UCSC), 
Jos� A. de Diego (UNAM), Leonid Georgiev (UNAM), Jes�s Gonz�lez (UNAM), 
Carlos Rom�n-Z��iga (UNAM), Neil Gehrels (GSFC), and Harvey Moseley (GSFC) report:

We observed the field of GRB 140518A (Melandri, et al., GCN 16298Not found
 
 
) with the
Reionization and Transients Infrared Camera (RATIR; www.ratir.org) on the
1.5m Harold Johnson Telescope at the Observatorio Astron�mico Nacional on
Sierra San Pedro M�rtir from 2014/05 18.41 to 2014/05 18.46 UTC (0.60
to 1.75 hours after the BAT trigger), obtaining a total of 0.71 hours
exposure in the r and i bands and 0.30 hours exposure in the Z,
Y, J, and H bands.

We detect the fading source identified by Zheng et al. (GCN 16299Not found
 
 
) and 
Perley et al. (GCN 16300Not found
 
 
) within the Swift-XRT error circle.
We confirm this to be the optical afterglow of GRB 140518A.

In comparison with the SDSS DR9 and 2MASS, we
obtain the following detections:

  r	20.50 +/- 0.04
  i	19.00 +/- 0.02
  Z	18.59 +/- 0.03
  Y	18.19 +/- 0.03
  J	18.13 +/- 0.02
  H	17.80 +/- 0.02

These magnitudes are in the AB system and are not corrected for Galactic
extinction in the direction of the GRB.
Based on these observations, and using our automatic photo-z
analysis tool (Littlejohns et al. arXiv:1312.3967) we determine two possible
photometric redshifts: assuming a Milky Way extinction curve for the GRB 
host we derive a photo-z of z=1.88 (+- 0.06) and A_V=1.8, while a SMC 
extinction law gives a z=4.63 (+- 0.11) and A_V=0.5. 
The second solution is consistent with the spectroscopic redshift
reported by Chornock et al. (GCN 16301Not found
 
 
).


We thank the staff of the Observatorio Astron�mico Nacional in San Pedro 
M�rtir.

[GCN OPS NOTE(19may14):  Per author's request, the "9.90 to 11.05"
was changed to "0.60 to 1.75".]