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GCN Circular 8537

Subject
GRB 081121: Swift detection of a burst
Date
2008-11-21T20:48:42Z (15 years ago)
From
David Palmer at LANL <palmer@lanl.gov>
S. R. Oates (UCL-MSSL), W. H. Baumgartner (GSFC/UMBC),
A. P. Beardmore (U Leicester), N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC),
O. Godet (U Leicester), S. T. Holland (CRESST/USRA/GSFC),
E. A. Hoversten (PSU), H. A. Krimm (CRESST/GSFC/USRA),
C. B. Markwardt (CRESST/GSFC/UMD), P. T. O'Brien (U Leicester),
C. Pagani (PSU), K. L. Page (U Leicester), D. M. Palmer (LANL),
P. Schady (MSSL-UCL), M. Stamatikos (NASA/ORAU),
R. L. C. Starling (U Leicester), L. Vetere (PSU) and
H. Ziaeepour (UCL-MSSL) report on behalf of the Swift Team:

At 20:35:32 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and
located GRB 081121 (trigger=335105).  Due to an Earth limb constraint
slew could not immediately slew to this burst. The BAT on-board 
calculated location is 
RA, Dec 89.264, -60.626 which is 
   RA(J2000) = 05h 57m 03s
   Dec(J2000) = -60d 37' 32"
with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including 
systematic uncertainty).  The BAT light curve showed a single FRED
structure with a duration of about 15 sec, with overlying spikes. 
There may be continued low-level emission out to 100 seconds. 
The peak count rate was ~4000 counts/sec (15-350 keV), 
at ~1.5 sec after the trigger. 

Due to an observing constraint, Swift will not slew until 
T0+45.2 minutes. There will be no XRT or UVOT data until
this time. 

Burst Advocate for this burst is S. R. Oates (sro AT mssl.ucl.ac.uk). 
Please contact the BA by email if you require additional information
regarding Swift followup of this burst. In extremely urgent cases, after
trying the Burst Advocate, you can contact the Swift PI by phone (see
Swift TOO web site for information: http://www.swift.psu.edu/too.html.)
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