GCN Circular 4753

GRB 060210: ARC NIR Detection of Afterglow and Possible Host Galaxy

F. Hearty (Colorado), M. Bayliss (Chicago), D. Q. Lamb (Chicago), R.
McMillan (APO), B. Ketzeback (APO), J. Barentine (APO), J. Dembicky
(APO), and D. G. York (Chicago) report:

We observed the afterglow (Fox and Cenko, GCN 4723
Not found
 
 
; Li, GCN 4725
Not found
 
 
, 2727
Not found
 
 
;
Williams and Milne, GCN 4728
Not found
 
 
, 4730
Not found
 
 
; Misra, GCN 4742
Not found
 
 
) of GRB 060210, a
bright burst localized by Swift (Beardmore et al. GCN 4724
Not found
 
 
, 4733
Not found
 
 
;
Takamoto et al. GCN 4748
Not found
 
 
), on the night of February 10, using NIC-FPS
on the ARC 3.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory.  The
observation began at 2.65 UT on 11 February (21.75 hours after the
burst) and ended at 3.35 UT on 11 February (22.37 hours after the
burst).  The observation consisted of a series of 90 20-second
exposures in Ks.  Using these exposures, we have constructed a stacked
image of the GRB field, corresponding to a 30-minute exposure.  Further
20-second exposures amounting to a total of 3300 seconds of exposure
were taken immediately following this and are being processed.

We detect an object at greater than the 5-sigma confidence level at the
location of the optical afterglow to within 0.5".  The PSF of the
object overlaps with that of an adjacent extended source, but appears
to be consistent with that of a point source.  We identify the object 
as the NIR afterglow of GRB 060210.  We measure Ks = 19.3 � 0.2 mag,
calibrated relative to the 2MASS stars in the field.

We also detect an extended object centered 2"-3" to the north and
immediately adjacent to the afterglow at Ks = 20.2 � 0.3 mag, which may
be the host galaxy of the burst.

NIC-FPS is currently in its commissioning phase.