GCN Circular 43381
Subject
GRB 260111A: GOTO optical upper limits
Event
Date
2026-01-12T21:35:29Z (12 days ago)
From
Ben Gompertz at U of Birmingham <b.gompertz@bham.ac.uk>
Via
email
B. P. Gompertz, D. O’Neill, A. Kumar, G. Ramsay, R. Starling, K. Ackley, M. Dyer, J. Lyman, K. Ulaczyk, D. Steeghs, D. Galloway, V. Dhillon, P. O'Brien, K. Noysena, R. Kotak, R. Breton, J. Casares, L. Nuttall, B. Godson, T. Killestein, S. Belkin, and M. Pursiainen report on behalf of GOTO collaboration:
We report on optical observations with the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO; Steeghs et al. 2022, Dyer et al. 2024) in response to GRB 260111A (Fermi GBM Team, GCN 43370; Ronchini et al., GCN 43377).
Observations of the GBM localisation region began at 2026-01-12 02:58:56 UT, (+10.4h post trigger) and continued through to 2026-01-12 06:46:03 UT (+14.2h post trigger). Each observation consisted of 4x90 s exposures in the GOTO L-band (400-700 nm). 109 images were taken, across 9 unique pointings, covering 209.3 square degrees within the 90% localisation contour. ~78.4% of the total 2D localisation probability was covered, with an average 5-sigma depth of 20.0 mag.
Images were processed immediately after acquisition using the GOTO pipeline. Difference imaging was performed using deeper template observations. Source candidates were initially filtered using a classifier (Killestein et al. 2021) and cross-matched against a variety of contextual and minor planet catalogs. Human vetting was carried out in real time on any candidates that passed the above checks.
The GUANO localisation region (Ronchini et al., GCN 43377) was fully covered in an epoch taken at 06:37:29 UT on 2026-01-12 (+14.1h post trigger). No new sources were identified to a 5-sigma limiting AB magnitude of L > 20.1 mag.
GOTO (https://goto-observatory.org) is a network of telescopes that is principally funded by the STFC and operated at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Spain, and Siding Spring Observatory in NSW, Australia, on behalf of a consortium including the University of Warwick, Monash University, Armagh Observatory & Planetarium, the University of Leicester, the University of Sheffield, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), the University of Turku, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham, and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC).