GCN Circular 7488
Subject
GRB 080320: Gemini-N optical afterglow
Date
2008-03-20T17:00:48Z (16 years ago)
From
Nial Tanvir at IofA U.Cambridge <nrt@ast.cam.ac.uk>
N. R. Tanvir, E. Rol (U. Leicester), A. Stephens (Gemini), report
on behalf of a larger collaboration:
We obtained griz observations of the field of GRB 080320 starting
approximately 80 mins post-burst with Gemini-N/GMOS. Conditions were
rather poor, with some cirrus, which reduced the depth of the images.
A 2nd epoch of i-band imaging was obtained 9 hours post-burst.
A fading point source is seen in both i-band images, somewhat outside
the enhanced XRT error circle (GCN 7479). The position (J2000) of
this counterpart, with respect to nearby SDSS stars, is (to 0.25
arcsec in each coordinate):
RA = 11 50 56.427
dec= +57 09 23.90
The SDSS galaxy noted in GCN 7480 is about 3 arcsec away from the
counterpart, and therefore probably unrelated to it.
Preliminary photometry (again relative to SDSS field stars) gives
i'=22.9, and fading between the epochs of 0.37+/-0.03 mag. This
relatively slow rate of fading could indicate a contribution from a
host galaxy. The counterpart is seen in the z-band, but is absent (or
very faint) in the r-band image with a limit of about r~24. This red
r-i colour could be explained by a Lyman-alpha break if the redshift
is z~4.5 to 5.
Further analysis is ongoing.