GRB 070406
GCN Circular 6298
Subject
GRB 070406: Swift XRT refined analysis
Date
2007-04-16T16:15:33Z (19 years ago)
From
Kim Page at U.of Leicester <kpa@star.le.ac.uk>
E. Troja (U. Leicester/INAF-IASFPa), K. L. Page (U. Leicester), S. McBreen
(MPE), D. N. Burrows (PSU) and N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC) report on behalf of
the Swift XRT team:
Swift monitored the field of GRB 070406 (Cummings et al., GCN Circ. 6247)
for nine days, starting 20.6 hr after the burst. From the analysis of the
full data set, consisting of 115 ks of total exposure in XRT/Photon
Counting mode, no X-ray afterglow is detected within the BAT refined error
circle (Krimm et al., GCN Circ.6261).
The two X-ray sources (S1 and S2 - Troja et al., GCN Circ. 6265) inside
the BAT error region do not show a fading behavior, therefore none of them
can be identified as the X-ray counterpart of GRB 070406.
The non detection in the first follow-up observation (from T0+20.6 hr to
T0+41.9 hr) implies an X-ray afterglow fainter than 7.5e-04 cts/s (3-sigma
upper limit). Assuming a power-law spectral shape with photon index 2 and
a Galactic absorption of 1.8e20 cm-2 (Dickey & Lockman, 1990), it
corresponds to an observed (unabsorbed) limiting flux of 2.7e-14 (2.9e-14)
erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.3-10 keV band.
No further Swift observations are planned.
This circular is an official product of the Swift XRT Team.
GCN Circular 6266
Subject
GRB 070406: "Star" in XRT error circle S2 is an AGN?
Date
2007-04-10T21:45:34Z (19 years ago)
From
Edo Berger at Carnegie Obs <eberger@ociw.edu>
E. Berger (Carnegie Observatories) reports:
"Inspection of our Gemini-North/GMOS images taken on 2007 April 8.39 UT in
0.55" seeing reveal that the source near the center of XRT source S2 (GCN
6265), which is classified as a star in SDSS, is embedded within a clearly
extended source. This may be a chance superposition of a star on top of a
background galaxy, or more likely, it is a bright AGN, similar to the
source coincident with XRT source S1 (GCN 6262). Additional XRT
observations are required to verify whether the source is steady.
We also note that in addition to the galaxy located 3.7" from the XRT
position, our images reveal five fainter extended sources within the error
circle."
GCN Circular 6265
Subject
GRB 070406: Swift XRT team further analysis
Date
2007-04-10T21:10:25Z (19 years ago)
From
Kim Page at U.of Leicester <kpa@star.le.ac.uk>
E. Troja (U. Leicester/INAF-IASFPa), K. L. Page (U. Leicester), J. Racusin
(PSU), S. McBreen (MPE), J. P. Osborne (U. Leicester), V. La Parola
(INAF-IASFPa), D. N. Burrows (PSU) and N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC) report on
behalf of the Swift XRT team:
We have performed further analysis on Swift XRT observations of the field
of GRB 070406 (Cummings et al., GCN Circ. 6247). Our data set consists of
56 ks of XRT observations taken in Photon Counting (PC) mode.
Thirteen serendipitous X-ray sources are detected with S/N > 3 with the
WAVDETECT algorithm, five of which have nearby optical counterparts in the
SDSS catalogue. We match these sources to obtain a best fit mean frame
shift, carefully accounting for several instrumental factors including
exposure map correction, and additional hot pixel removal. The resulting
astrometric corrected position of the X-ray source (S1), proposed as the
afterglow candidate (Troja et al., GCN Circ. 6255), is:
RA (J2000) = 13h 15m 51.59s
Dec(J2000) = +16d 30' 46.6"
with an estimated error radius of 4.7'' (90% containment). This position
lies 1.9 arcsec from the position quoted in Butler et al. (GCN Circ.
6263) and 1.7 arcsec from the bright optical source reported by Kann (GCN
Circ. 6256).
The X-ray lightcurve of S1 can be found at:
http://www.ifc.inaf.it/~troja/grb070406_s1.gif
It displays a steady behavior with a fairly constant count rate of 1.5e-03
cts/s. It seems unlikely that S1 is the X-ray counterpart of GRB 070406,
as noted by Butler et al. (GCN Circ. 6263), and it is more likely
associated with AGN activity (Berger et al., GCN Circ. 6262).
Examining the observations performed between 2 d and 3.5 d after the
burst, another faint source (S2) is detected within the refined BAT error
circle (Krimm et al., GCN Circ. 6261). Its astrometric corrected position
is:
RA (J2000) = 13h 15m 43.42s
Dec(J2000) = +16d 31' 09.3"
with an estimated error radius of 5.7'' (90% containment). This position
lies 92 arcsec from the BAT refined position given in Krimm et al. (GCN
Circ. 6261