GCN Circular 7940
Subject
GRB 080703: VLT observations of the afterglow
Date
2008-07-04T10:58:08Z (16 years ago)
From
Daniele Malesani at Niels Bohr Inst,Dark Cosmology Center <malesani@astro.ku.dk>
D. Malesani, P. M. Vreeswijk, J. P. U. Fynbo, J. Hjorth (DARK/NBI), P.
Jakobsson (Univ. Hertfordshire), report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
We observed the field of GRB 080703 (Ziaeepour et al., GCN 7936) with
the ESO VLT equipped with FORS1. Due to visibility constraints,
observations could only be carried out during twilight at high airmass.
The optical afterglow first reported by Rykoff & Schaefer (GCN 7935; see
also Ziaeepour et al., GCN 7936) is detected in our image (15 s
exposure). On 2008 Jul 3.948 UT (3.76 hr after the GRB), the afterglow
had R ~ 21.6 assuming R = 15.92 for the USNO star at (06:47:12.61,
-63:12:31.7).
A finding chart is posted at
http://www.astro.ku.dk/~malesani/GRB/080703/080703_finder.png
No further observations are planned. We acknowledge excellent support
from the ESO staff in executing this challenging observation,
particularly Thomas Szeifert and Dominique Naef.
