GCN Circular 572

B. Stecklum, S. Klose (Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg), 
O. Fischer (Universitaets-Sternwarte Jena),
C. Bailer-Jones, U. Thiele, A. Aguirre  
   (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astronomie, Heidelberg),
F. J. Vrba, A. A. Henden, C. B. Luginbuhl,
   B. Canzian, S. E. Levine, H. H. Guetter, J. A. Munn
   (U.S. Naval Observatory, Flagstaff),
D. H. Hartmann (Clemson University, Clemson),   
A. Castro-Tirado (LAEFF-INTA, Madrid, and IAA-CSIC, Granada), 
J. Greiner (AIP Potsdam), and 
J. Gorosabel (LAEFF-INTA, Madrid, and University of Amsterdam)

report:


The error box of the burst GRB 000301c reported by Smith et al. (GCN
#568
Not found
 
 
) was imaged with the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope on March 3, 4:41 UT 
- 5:38 UT using the near-infrared camera Omega Cass. The frames
were taken in the course of a project whose goal is to measure the
degree of linear polarization of GRB afterglows. The limiting
magnitude of the K'-band image is about K'=19 after adding all images
taken at different position angles of the wire-grid polarizer. 

The potential optical transient reported by Fynbo et al. (GCN #570
Not found
 
 
) is 
clearly detected. Based on the assumption that the B-R colour index of
the star USNO 125_07686794 is representative for its spectral type, a
preliminary estimate of the K'-band magnitude of the potential afterglow
of 17.4 was derived.

The image is posted on the Tautenburg Web page at
http://www.tls-tautenburg.de/research/grb000301c.html.


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