GCN Circular 7791
Subject
GRB 080603: Gemini-North redshift
Event
Date
2008-06-03T15:29:48Z (18 years ago)
From
Daniel Perley at U.C. Berkeley <dperley@astro.berkeley.edu>
D. A. Perley, J. S. Bloom (UC Berkeley), and J. X. Prochaska (UCO/Lick)
report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
Following the KAIT detection (Chornock et al., GCN 7789) of the
afterglow candidate of GRB 080603 (Paizis et al., GCN 7790; Gomboc et
al., GCN 7788) we began a spectroscopic sequence at Gemini-North using
GMOS. We acquired 2x1200s longslit exposures starting at UT 13:24. We
detect very strong resonance lines of MgII and FeII and the
fine-structure transitions of FeII which establish the redshift of the
GRB to be z=1.6880. In addition, we identify intervening MgII
absorption systems at z=1.5635 (90% c.l.) and z=1.271 (100% c.l.)
In addition, in a single acquisition exposure starting at UT 13:05:05
(107 minutes after the trigger) the object has a magnitude (relative to
USNO B1.0) of R~19.7, suggesting it has not faded significantly since
the observations of Gomboc et al. (GCN 7788).
We thank Richard McDermid and the Gemini staff and for support.