GCN Circular 29013
Subject
GRB 201209A: Xinglong-2.16m likely optical afterglow detection
Event
Date
2020-12-09T15:24:53Z (5 years ago)
From
Dong Xu at NAOC/CAS <dxu@nao.cas.cn>
Z.P. Zhu (NAOC, HUST), S.Y. Fu, X. Liu, D. Xu (NAOC) report on behalf of
a larger collaboration:
We observed the field of GRB 201209A (Gropp et al., GCN 29005) using the
2.16-m optical telescope located at Xinglong, Hebei, China, equipped
with the BFOSC camera. Observations started at 13:05:43 UT on
2020-12-09, and 2x360 s, 3x600 s R-band frames were obtained.
An uncatalogued source is detected in our stacked image at coordinates
R.A. (J2000) = 1:32:21.76
Dec. (J2000) = -1:45:17.13
with an uncertainty of ~0.5 arcsec, being fully consistent with the
Enhanced XRT position (Goad et al., GCN 29009). Calibrated with nearby
PS1 stars, the source has m(R) = 22.05 +/- 0.16 mag at a median time of
0.321 days post-burst, whereas PS1 is deeper but no object is present at
the position. We thus conclude that the source is likely the optical
afterglow of the burst.
We acknowledge excellent support from the Xinglong-2.16m observing
staff, in particular Aiying Zhou and Jie Zheng.