GCN Circular 1886
Subject
Two absorption systems in GRB 030226
Event
Date
2003-02-26T19:39:32Z (23 years ago)
From
Jochen Greiner at MPI <jcg@mpe.mpg.de>
J. Greiner (MPE Garching),
E. Guenther, S. Klose (both TLS Tautenburg),
R. Schwarz (Uni. Goettingen), on behalf of the GRACE collaboration
report:
The afterglow of the HETE burst (H10893) GRB 030226 (Fox et al., GCN 1879;
Price et al., GCN 1880) was observed with the VLT Yepun and the FORS2
spectrograph, equipped with the 300V grism on Feb. 26, beginning at 08:52 UT.
The total exposure time was 15 min. In the calibrated spectrum, covering
the 360-900 nm region, we clearly identify two distinct absorption-line
systems of Fe II (160.8), Al II (167.1) and CIV (154.8) at redshifts
z=1.962+/-0.001 and 1.986+/-0.001, improving earlier findings
(Ando et al., GCN 1884). We conclude that the redshift of the burster
is z=1.986+/-0.001 or larger.
We are grateful for the assistence of the staff at Paranal.