GCN Circular 3213
Subject
GRB 050408: SOAR UBVRc Observations
Event
Date
2005-04-10T01:13:30Z (21 years ago)
From
Daniel E. Reichart at U.North Carolina <reichart@physics.unc.edu>
M. Nysewander, S. Heathcote (CTIO), D. Reichart, M. Bayliss report on
behalf of the UNC team of the FUN GRB Collaboration:
We observed the afterglow of GRB 050408 (Sakamoto et al., GCN 3189; Wells
et al., GCN 3191; de Ugarte Postigo et al., GCN 3192) with the 4.1-meter
diameter SOAR Telescope at CTIO, using the SOAR Optical Imager.
Beginning 9.3 hours after the burst, we observed for 10 x 200 sec in Rc, 9
x 200 sec in each of V and B, and 9 x 300 sec in U. The afterglow is well
detected in Rc, V, and B.
Between 9.3 and 10.7 hours after the burst, the Rc light curve faded with a
temporal index of -2.23 +/- 0.60. However, between 10.7 and 13.4 hours
after the burst, the temporal index is only -0.54 +/- 0.36. This suggests
that the afterglow was fading rapidly but is now contaminated by a host
galaxy. This confirms the host galaxy identified by Lamb et al. (GCN 3212)
in the SDSS DR3.
We are very grateful to the SOAR staff for supporting these observations
during SOAR's commissioning period.