GCN Circular 5876

E. Rol (U of Leicester), K. Wiersema (U of Amsterdam) and P. Prema
(Cambridge) report on behalf of a larger collaboration:

We observed the afterglow of GRB 061126 (Sbarufatti et al, GCN
Circ. 5854
Not found
 
 
) on the nights of 26-27 and 27-28 November, with the Wide
Field Camera (WFC) on the 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope at La Palma.

We detect the afterglow in r' and i' images on both nights. Photometry
relative to the SDSS data (Cool et al, GCN Circ. 5863
Not found
 
 
) shows a steadily
declining light curve with a -1.0 (+/- 0.1) power-law decay between
0.54 and 1.76 days after the burst, with no evidence for a break. This
is in contrast to the report by Kann (GCN Circ. 5875
Not found
 
 
).

The r'-band image at 1.76 days post burst shows the likely host galaxy
underneath the afterglow. The magnitude of the host + OT in a
seeing-matched aperture is 22.76 +/- 0.06. The image can be seen at
http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~er45/grb061126/ . The underlying host probably
means the light curve decay is somewhat steeper than our estimated
-1.0 decay, although not by too much, and would likely not explain the
discrepancy with the result reported by Kann.

The large field of view of the WFC, in combination with the SDSS
astrometry, allows for an accurate astrometric solution of the optical
afterglow position. Our best position is (J2000):

   RA  =  05 46 24.428
   Dec =  64 12 38.78

with an estimated error of 0.12 arcseconds in both coordinates.