GCN Circular 4208
Subject
GRB051103: optical observations
Event
Date
2005-11-07T23:53:33Z (21 years ago)
From
Eran Ofek at Tel Aviv U. <eran@wise1.tau.ac.il>
E. O. Ofek, S. B. Cenko, A. M. Soderberg, S. R. Kulkarni (Caltech), D. B.
Fox (Penn State) report on behalf of the Caltech-NRAO-Carnegie
Collaboration:
We have observed the entire error box of the IPN short hard burst GRB
051103 (Golenetskii et al. 2005, GCN 4197) using the Robotic Palomar
60-inch telescope. We acquired 8 pointings (3-9 180sec R-band images
each) that cover the entire IPN error box over epochs between 2.96 and
3.16 days after the GRB trigger.
A comparison between the Palomar 60-inch image and POSS2 R-band image
did not reveal any new source brighter than limiting magnitude of about
R=19.5. Our images are deeper than the POSS images, and there are
several possible fainter variable/defects sources within the error box.
Second epoch images are scheduled.
Assuming that the GRB is related with the M81/M82 group, and using a
distance modulus of 27.8 (Freedman et al. 1994), and A_R=0.2 Galactic
extinction (Schlegel et al. 1998), we can set an upper limit of -8.5
(comparable to the absolute magnitude of novae) on the R-band absolute
magnitude of an optical transient.