GCN Circular 612

Alberto Castro-Tirado, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and IAA-CSIC (Granada)
Jan Soldan and Rene Hudec, ASU (Ondrejov)
Petr Pata and Martin Bernas, CVUT-FEL (Prague)
Javier Gorosabel, DSRI (Copenhagen)
Jose Maria Castro Ceron, ROA (San Fernando)
Tomas Mateo Sanguino, INTA-CEDEA (Huelva)
Antonio de Ugarte, UCM (Madrid)
Jose Angel Berna, UA (Alicante)
on behalf of the BOOTES-1 Team

Arne Henden, USRA/USNO (Flagstaff)
F. Vrba, B. Canzian, H. Harris, USNO (Flagstaff)
Xavier Delfosse, IAC (Tenerife)
and Scott Barthelmy, NASA-GSFC (Greenbelt)

report:

"We have obtained several images centred at the BATSE ORIGINAL error
box for the rather faint burst GRB 000313 (BATSE trigger 8035) with
the wide-field CCD of BOOTES-1 on Mar 13.8868 UT (4-min after the
GRB, 5-min exposure time in the I-band) and with the narrow-field CCD        
attached to the 0.3-m telescope on Mar 14.0847 UT (4.8-h after the
event, 10-min exposure time, no filter). Limiting magnitudes of the
images are about 13 and 18 respectively. The first frame reveals a
bright new source of about 10th mag when comparing with the following
images obtained starting 55-min later. This point-like object, with the
same PSF than other field stars, is not detected in the rest of BOOTES-1
images taken during the night. The position of this optical transient
is AR(2000) = 13h50m07.9s, Dec(2000) =+31 16 49  (+/- 3"). Unfortunately
no more frames were obtained at the same position in the time interval
9-min < T < 55-min due to a mosaizing around the field. Further
images were acquired at the 1.0-m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on March
14.169-14.200 UT (BVRI bands) and at the 1.3-m and 1.55-m USNO telescopes
on March 14.216-14.261 UT (R- and I-bands) but no object is detected
within the OT error box down to a limiting magnitude of I = 21.
Although we cannot exclude at this moment that this object could be
due to a satellite glint or to an airplane flash, multiwavelength
observations (specially radio and deep optical) are encouraged in order
to see whether this could be the optical afterglow to GRB 000313. The
images are posted at http://www.laeff.esa.es/~ajct/GRBs/GRB000313".