GCN Circular 844

Janet A. Mattei, AAVSO Director, reports:

On the evening of September 28 UT, in response to an alert on the
AAVSO's GRB mailing list, Joe Dellinger, Fort Bend Astronomy Club
(FBAC), Texas, took a sequence of unfiltered CCD images of the
GRB000926 field.  He used the FBAC's 46 cm reflector at the Houston
Museum of Natural Science's George Observatory, and an SBIG ST-9e
camera on generous loan from Rice University.  He could not see any
optical transients on individual four-minute images when comparing
them with a DSS-derived finder chart.

Fellow FBAC member Bill Dillon combined the best seven of Joe's
four-minute images into an equivalent 28 minute image.  The combined
image's UT mid-point time was 03:16:16.  From positions and annotated
images reported by professional astronomers, he realized that the OT had
been imaged, near the threshold of detection.  Using Astrometrica and
the USNO-A2.0 catalog, the OT's position was measured at:

RA 17h 04m 09.76s,
DEC +51d 47' 10.6"

with a magnitude of roughly 19.1.

On the evening of October 3 UT, Randy Pepper and Bill Dillon did
follow-up imaging of the GRB000926 field using the same telescope and
camera.  The OT had faded below detectability on a image made by
combining 31 one-minute exposures.

Joe, Bill, and Randy are all members of the FBAC's Gamma Ray Burst
Extended Team, formed as the result of the NASA-MSFC/AAVSO High Energy
Astrophysics Workshop held this April in Huntsville, Alabama.

More information and imagery associated with this detection are
available at http://www.geocities.com/amicustellarum/grb/grb000926.html

This message may be cited.