GCN Circular 2189

Subject

GRB030501: TAROT candidate afterglow present in archival images

Event

Date

2003-05-01T21:06:23Z (23 years ago)

From

Derek Fox at CIT <derekfox@astro.caltech.edu>

D. Fox (Caltech) reports:

"The candidate GRB030501 optical afterglow of Boer & Klotz (GCN 2188Loading...
 
 )
is present in archival images of the Second Palomar Optical Sky Survey
(XDSS) and the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS).  Although the
object, which appears to be a star, is undetected in the XDSS B-band
image, and faint in the XDSS R-band image, it is well-detected in the
XDSS I-band image and extremely bright (among the brightest stars in
the near field) in 2MASS J, H, and Ks images.  These archival images
may be viewed at the web page:

   http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~derekfox/grb030501/tarot.html

We conclude that the object is not the optical afterglow of GRB030501.
We also note in passing that the optical extinction in this field,
very near the Galactic disk, is extremely high, E(B-V) = 14.8 mag from
the dust maps of Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis (1998).  Such
highly-reddened objects are thus to be expected."