GCN Circular 1720

A. J. Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIC and LAEFF-INTA),
A. de Ugarte Postigo, T. J. Mateo Sanguino (CEDEA-INTA),
 M. J�linek, P. Kub�nek, R. Hudec (ASU), S. Vitek,
P. P�ta (CVUT) and J. �. Bern�  (Univ. de Alicante)
on behalf of the BOOTES team,

report:

"We have obtained several unfiltred exposures (45-s each)
under good metereological conditions covering the short/hard
GRB 021201  IPN error box (Hurley et al. GCN 1719
Not found
 
 
). The
images covered the period  05:28:23 - 05:32:12 UT 1 Dec 2002
(i.e. between 1.68-minutes before the trigger and 2.12-minutes
after the trigger) with the very wide-field  camera of BOOTES-1
(http://www.laeff.esa.es/BOOTES).

After a visual inspection of the IPN error box (Hurley et al.,
GCN 1719
Not found
 
 
)  in all frames, we do not find evidence of optical
emission, in particular  simultaneously to the burst itself, for
which we have an image covering  the time interval 05:29:55
- 05:30:40 UT. Therefore we derive an upper  limit  of R = 10
for any  optical counterpart simultaneous to this short/hard
GRB.

To our knowledge, this is the second short/hard GRB for which
simultaneous images are available, following GRB 020531
(Castro-Tirado et al. 2002, GCN 1430
Not found
 
 
). See also Castro-Tirado
et al. 2002(A&A 393, L55) regarding this issue."


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