GCN Circular 8121

A. de Ugarte Postigo (ESO Santiago & IAA-CSIC Granada), A. J.
Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIC Granada), J. M. Corral-Santana and J. Casares (IAC La
Laguna), J. Blomme (Katholieke Univ. Leuven), P. Kub�nek, M. Jel�nek and
J. Gorosabel (IAA-CSIC),
report:

"Following the discovery of the new soft gamma-ray repeater SGR 0501+4516
by SWIFT (Holland et al. GCNC 8112, Barthelmy et al. GCNC 8113), we have
observed the field starting on Aug 23 (since 01:45 UT) with different
telescopes/instruments on Spanish ground-based observatories: 0.6m
BOOTES-2 (Z-band), 1.2m Mercator Telescope (Ic-band) and 2.5m Isaac Newton
Telescope (r' & i' -bands). No optical counterpart within the reported
Swift XRT error box is detected on the first r'-band image obtained on Aug
23, 02:49 UT (high
airmass, limiting magnitude r'~21.5). We notice that some of the later
images overlap in time with the large gamma-ray flare reported by Krimm et
al. (GCN 8120
Not found
 
 
) with null detection as a preliminary result once we have
inspected
by eye the whole BAT error box. Further analysis is on going".


This message can be quoted.

[GCN OPS NOTE(23aug08): Per author's request, "J. Corral" was replaced with
"J. M. Corral-Santana" in the author list.]