GCN Circular 29600
Subject
GRB 210306A: LCO Optical Afterglow Detection
Date
2021-03-06T07:40:57Z (3 years ago)
From
Robert Strausbaugh at U. of the Virgin Islands <robert.strausbaugh@uvi.edu>
R. Strausbaugh (U. of the Virgin Islands), A. Cucchiara (U. of the Virgin Islands/College of Marin) report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
We observed Swift GRB 210306A (D'Elia et al., GCN 29597) with the LCO 1-m Sinistro instrument at the McDonald Observatory, Texas, USA site, on March 6, from 06:49 to 07:06 UT (corresponding to 2.93 to 3.22 hours from the GRB trigger time) with the Bessel R and I filters.
We performed a series of 4x120s exposures in R and I. We clearly detect an optical source in R and I band in stacked images at a location consistent the initial UVOT detection (D'Elia et al., GCN 29597), in agreement with other optical afterglow detections (Watson et al., GCN 29598; Romanov, GCN 29599). Using the USNO-B.1 catalog as reference, we calculate the following magnitudes:
R = 19.00 +/- 0.02
I = 17.70 +/- 0.03
These magnitudes are not corrected for galactic extinction. The fainter R magnitude could indicate a moderately high redshift.
R.S. is funded by NSF AST grant #1831682