GRB 011012

Optical Observations of the field of HETE trigger #1793

J. S. Bloom, D. W. Fox and P. A. Price report on behalf of the larger
Caltech-NRAO-CARA GRB collaboration:

We observed the center of the error box of HETE trigger #1793 with the
Large Format Camera (LFC) on the Palomar 200-inch telescope, commencing
approximately 12 minutes after the trigger.  The R-band images cover an
area ~26 arcminutes in radius and were centered on the the error circle.
Comparison of the first image acquired with the Digital Sky Survey shows
no obvious new sources.  Further observations are on-going both at the
200-inch and the Oschin Schmidt 48-inch.

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P. A. Price, J. S. Bloom and D. W. Fox report on behalf of the larger
Caltech-NRAO-CARA GRB collaboration:

We have obtained second epoch images of HETE trigger #1793 with the Large
Format Camera (LFC) on the Palomar 200-inch telescope, approximately 45
minutes after the GRB.  Our R-band images cover an area approximately 26
arcminutes in radius, centered on the error box, with an estimated
limited magnitude of R ~ 23 mag, based on comparison with USNO-A2.0.

Comparison of the first aquired image (t_GRB + 12 min, GCN #1105
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 ) with
the second epoch reveals a single variable source within the field of
view (apart from several high proper motion objects), located at J2000
coordinates 2:37:18.2 42:02:56 (estimated error approximately 1 arcsec).
This source is clearly detected on the Digital Sky Survey images, and so
is likely simply a variable star and unrelated to the HETE trigger.

Further observations and analysis are underway.

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