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."