GCN Circular 452

GRB 991208, optical observations
--------------------------------------

Alberto Castro-Tirado, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and IAA-CSIC (Granada)
Javier Gorosabel, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and Univ of Amsterdam (UoA)
Jochen Greiner, AIP (Potsdam)
Holger Pedersen, KUO (Copenhagen)
Elena Pian, ITESRE (Bologna)
Paul Vreeswijk (UoA)
on behalf of a larger European Collaboration
Chris Blake and Jasper Wall (Univ. of Oxford)
Georg Feulner and Ulrich Hopp, Universitaets Sternwarte (Muenchen)
Nick Rattenbury (Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand)

report:

"We have obtained several exposures of the IPN error box for
GRB 991208 (Hurley et al. GCN 450
Not found
 
 
) with the 2.5-m Isaac Newton
telescope at La Palma and with the 2.2-m telescope at the German-
Spanish Calar Alto Observatory.  The images were taken on Dec 10.27
(I-band) and Dec 11.25 UT (R- and I-band filters).
After a visual comparison with the Digital Sky Survey, a new source
is clearly detected with R = 19.1 +/- 0.1 (Dec 11.27). Its position
is AR(2000) = 16h 33m 53.51s, Dec(2000) = +46 27 21.5 (+/- 1"). We note
that this object coincides with the radio source reported by Frail et al.
(GCN 451
Not found
 
 
) and therefore is the optical afterglow to GRB 991208. Further
multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopy are encouraged. A finding
chart will be posted at http://www.laeff.esa.es/~ajct/GRBs/GRB991208"

This message is quotable.