GCN Circular 22305

A. P. Beardmore (U Leicester), A. Y. Lien (GSFC/UMBC) and
D. M. Palmer (LANL) report on behalf of the Swift Team:

At 01:08:30 UT on 3 Jan 2018, BAT detected a rate increase.  
However further analysis was truncated by a pre-planned slew.  
Using the limited data available (including 10 seconds of 
event-by-event data from the rising edge of the burst overlapping 
the start of the slew) ground analysis finds a strong peak
in the reconstructed image, which is GRB 180103A (Trigger #803066). 
The image peak is at
RA,Dec =  159.585, -53.555 which is
  RA(J2000) = 10h 38m 20.3s 
  Dec(J2000)  -53d 33' 16.9"
with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including 
systematic uncertainty).  The BAT light curve showed a multi-peaked
structure with a duration of about 170 sec.  The peak count rate
was ~37,000 counts/sec (15-350 keV), at ~103 sec after the trigger. 

Due to the lack of onboard image detection, Swift did not slew to the
GRB and so there were no immediate XRT or UVOT follow-up observations. 

Burst Advocate for this burst is A. P. Beardmore (apb AT star.le.ac.uk). 
Please contact the BA by email if you require additional information
regarding Swift followup of this burst. In extremely urgent cases, after
trying the Burst Advocate, you can contact the Swift PI by phone (see
Swift TOO web site for information: http://www.swift.psu.edu/too.html.)