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GCN Circular 472

Subject
GRB 991216, Optical Afterglow
Date
1999-12-17T12:48:46Z (25 years ago)
From
Jules Halpern at Columbia U. <jules@astro.columbia.edu>
Robert Uglesich, Nestor Mirabal, J. Halpern (Columbia U.), Susan Kassin, &
Sebastino Novati (Ohio State U.) report on behalf of the MDM Observatory
GRB follow-up team:

"We find a probable afterglow of the extremely bright BATSE burst GRB 991216
(Kippen et al. GCN #463) in a series of R-band observations taken by 
S. Kassin and S. Novati on the MDM 1.3m telescope.  An object at 
(J2000) 05:09:31.2, +11:17:07.2 faded from approximately R = 18.8 on
Dec. 17.142 to R = 19.4 on Dec 17.372.  The corresponding power-law decay 
index is -1.4. This object is not visible on the digitized POSS II plate.
Its position is consistent with the latest RXTE scan (Markwardt et al. 
GCN/RXTE_PCA notice). 

This preliminary photometry is based on several USNO stars.  We used a 
nonstandard broad R filter which transforms very well with Landolt R.

A finding chart is posted at 
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~rru/GRB991216.html


This message may be cited."
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