GCN Circular 9582
Subject
GRB 090423: Spitzer observations of the z~8.3 burst
Date
2009-06-26T21:12:05Z (15 years ago)
From
Edo Berger at Harvard <eberger@cfa.harvard.edu>
R. Chary, J. Surace, S. Carey (SSC/Caltech), E. Berger (Harvard), and G.
Fazio (SAO/Harvard) report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
"As part of the IRAC Warm Instrument Characterization Campaign (IWIC),
we observed the field of the z=8.3 GRB090423 (GCN 9198) for 72 hours
using Spitzer/IRAC at 3.6 microns. The observations took place between
2009 June 5.01 and 10.81 UT, corresponding to about 46 days after the
burst in the observer frame, or about 5 days in the rest-frame. We
detect a weak source at the location of the near-IR afterglow (Tanvir et
al. 2009 arXiv:0906.1577), confirmed through an astrometric tie to the
Gemini-North near-IR images. Aperture-corrected photometry of the
source results in a 3.6 micron flux density of 46+/-17 nJy (or
27.2+/-0.3 AB mag). The spectral energy distribution and power-law
decay of the afterglow presented in Tanvir et al. 2009 predicts a 3.6
micron flux density of ~27.3 AB mag at the time of our observations.
The detected source is thus consistent with being the afterglow.
An image of the region can be found at:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rchary/grb090423/
Light colors designate bright flux, dark colors are faint. The pixel
scale in the IRAC image (left) is 0.4"/pixel. The right-hand image is
the Gemini J-band image from Cucchiara et al. (GCN 9209). The red
circles are 1" radius and show the position of the afterglow.
Further analysis is ongoing, and a second epoch of observations is
planned for February 2010 to assess the contribution of an
underlying host galaxy to the measured flux."