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GRB 120817B

GCN Circular 13670

Subject
IPN Triangulation of GRB 120817B (short/very intense)
Date
2012-08-17T19:44:53Z (13 years ago)
From
Dmitry Svinkin at Ioffe Institute <svinkin@mail.ioffe.ru>
S. Golenetskii, R. Aptekar, E. Mazets, V. Pal'shin, D. Frederiks,
D. Svinkin, and T. Cline on behalf of the Konus-Wind team,

K. Hurley, and J. Goldsten, on behalf of the MESSENGER GRNS GRB team,

V. Connaughton, M. Briggs, and C. Meegan, on behalf of the Fermi
GBM team,

A. von Kienlin, X. Zhang, A. Rau, V. Savchenko, E. Bozzo, and C.
Ferrigno, on behalf of the INTEGRAL SPI-ACS GRB team,

S. Barthelmy, J. Cummings, N. Gehrels, H. Krimm, and D. Palmer, on
behalf of the Swift-BAT team,

and

K. Yamaoka, M. Ohno, Y. Hanabata, Y. Fukazawa, T. Takahashi, M. Tashiro,
Y. Terada, T. Murakami, and K. Makishima on behalf of the Suzaku WAM
team, report:

The short-duration, hard, very intense GRB 120817B has been observed by 
Konus-Wind, Fermi (GBM: trigger 366868952), INTEGRAL (SPI-ACS), Suzaku 
(WAM), Swift(BAT) and MESSENGER (GRNS), so far, at about 14550  s UT 
(04:02:30).

We have triangulated the burst to a preliminary, 3 sigma error box whose
coordinates are:
   ---------------------------------------------
    RA(2000), deg                 Dec(2000), deg
   ---------------------------------------------
   Center:
      8.321 (00h 33m 17s) -26.514 (-26d 30' 51")
   Corners:
      8.445 (00h 33m 47s) -26.217 (-26d 13' 00")
      8.468 (00h 33m 52s) -26.456 (-26d 27' 23")
      8.196 (00h 32m 47s) -26.809 (-26d 48' 34")
      8.174 (00h 32m 42s) -26.571 (-26d 34' 17")
   ---------------------------------------------
The error box area is 235 sq. arcmin, and its maximum
dimension is 38 arcmin (the minimum dimension is 14 arcmin).

A Swift ToO has been requested.

This box can be improved.

A triangulation map is posted at
http://www.ioffe.ru/LEA/GRBs/GRB120817_T14553/IPN/

The time history and spectrum will be given in a forthcoming GCN Circular.

GCN Circular 13671

Subject
GRB 120817B: Fermi GBM detection
Date
2012-08-17T21:29:55Z (13 years ago)
From
Shaolin Xiong at UAH <sx0002@uah.edu>
Shaolin Xiong (UAH) reports on behalf of the Fermi GBM Team:

"At 04:02:29.723 UT on 17 August 2012, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor
triggered and located GRB 120817B (trigger 366868952 / 120817168),
which was also located by IPN (S. Golenetskii et al. 2012, GCN 13670).
The GBM on-ground location is consistent with the IPN position.
The angle from the Fermi LAT boresight is 59 degrees.

This burst was also independently detected by INTEGRAL SPI-ACS.

The GBM light curve shows a single pulse
with a duration (T90) of about 0.192 s (50-300 keV).
The time-averaged spectrum from T0-0.032 s to T0+0.064 s is
best fit by a power law function with an exponential
high-energy cutoff. The power law index is -0.65 +/- 0.05 and
the cutoff energy, parameterized as Epeak, is 1377 +/- 173 keV.

The event fluence (10-1000 keV) in this time interval is
(1.85 +/- 0.06)E-6 erg/cm^2. The 64 ms peak photon flux measured
starting from T0+0.0 s in the 10-1000 keV band
is 46.6 +/- 1.6 ph/s/cm^2.

The spectral analysis results presented above are preliminary;
final results will be published in the GBM GRB Catalog."

GCN Circular 13672

Subject
GRB 120817B: LCO Optical Observations
Date
2012-08-18T05:30:45Z (13 years ago)
From
Edo Berger at Harvard <eberger@cfa.harvard.edu>
E. Berger, W. Fong (Harvard), and R. Williams (Carnegie) report:

"We observed the IPN error region of the short GRB 120817B (GCN #13670)
with the Wide-Field CCD camera mounted on the du Pont 2.5-m telescope at
Las Campanas Observatory.  The observations started on 2012 August 18.158
UT (23.7 hour after the burst) using the R-band filter, and covered the
entire error region using two pointings with an exposure time of 900 sec
per pointing.  A comparison to the Digital Sky Survey reveals no new
sources to the limit of the survey (R~21 mag)."

GCN Circular 13674

Subject
Konus-Wind observation of GRB 120817B
Date
2012-08-18T11:45:16Z (13 years ago)
From
Dmitry Frederiks at Ioffe Institute <fred@mail.ioffe.ru>
S. Golenetskii, R.Aptekar, D. Frederiks, E. Mazets, V. Pal'shin,
P. Oleynik, M. Ulanov, D. Svinkin, and T. Cline on behalf
of the Konus-Wind team, report:

The short-duration hard-spectrum intense GRB 120817B
(IPN localization: Golenetskii at al., GCN 13670;
Fermi/GBM detection: Xiong, GCN 13671)
triggered Konus-Wind at T0=14553.388s UT (04:02:33.388)

The light curve shows a single pulse,
a total duration of the burst is ~0.08 s.
The emission is seen up to ~6.5 MeV.

The Konus-Wind light curve of this GRB is available at
http://www.ioffe.ru/LEA/GRBs/GRB120817_T14553/

As observed by Konus-Wind the burst
had a fluence of 4.1(-1.0,+1.1)x10-6 erg/cm2,
and a 16-ms peak flux, measured from T0,
of 1.2(-0.3,+0.3)x10-4 erg/cm2/s
(both in the 20 keV - 10 MeV energy range).

The spectrum of the burst (measured from T0 to T0+0.064 s)
is best fit in the 20 keV - 7 MeV range
by a power law with exponential cutoff model, for which
alpha = -0.82 (-0.18, +0.21),
and Ep = 1740(-520, +890) keV,
chi2 = 7.5/12 dof.

All the quoted results are preliminary.
All the quoted errors are at the 90% confidence level.

GCN Circular 13680

Subject
GRB 120817B: Swift-XRT observations
Date
2012-08-19T00:41:08Z (13 years ago)
From
Claudio Pagani at U of Leicester <cp232@star.le.ac.uk>
C. Pagani (U. Leicester) reports on behalf of the Swift team:

At 22:41:45 UT, August 17, 2012, Swift began a Target of Opportunity observation of GRB 120817B (Golenetskii et al. GCN 13670).

We have analysed 2.8 ks of XRT data, beginning 67 ks after the GRB trigger. The data are entirely in Photon Counting mode. No new source is detected in the XRT data. The 3-sigma upper limit is 0.005 counts/sec which is 2.7e-13 erg cm^-2 s^-1 for a typical GRB spectrum.

This circular is an official product of the Swift-XRT team.

GCN Circular 13692

Subject
GRB 120817B: BAT location in ground analysis and refined analysis
Date
2012-08-20T14:35:48Z (13 years ago)
From
Jay R. Cummings at NASA/GSFC/Swift <james.r.cummings@nasa.gov>
J. R. Cummings (GSFC/UMBC), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC),
W. H. Baumgartner (GSFC/UMBC), E. E. Fenimore (LANL), N. Gehrels (GSFC),
H. A. Krimm (GSFC/USRA), C. B. Markwardt (GSFC), D. M. Palmer (LANL),
T. Sakamoto (GSFC/UMBC), G. Sato (ISAS), M. Stamatikos (OSU),
J. Tueller (GSFC), T. N. Ukwatta (MSU)
(i.e. the Swift-BAT team):

At 04:02:29 on August 17, 2012, Swift-BAT triggered (BAT trigger # 531259) on
the IPN burst GRB 120817B (Golenetskii et al., GCN Circ # 13670).  No source
was found onboard.  In ground analysis of the failed-trigger event sample, a
significant source was found at RA, Dec 8.310, -26.428, which is

RA (J2000)   00h 33m 14.4s 		
Dec (J2000)  -26d 25m 42s

The estimated 90% confidence position error is 2.8 arcmin radius.  This
position was 5.5% coded in the BAT FOV.  It is 5 arcmin from the center of
the IPN triangulation, within the IPN error box.

As seen in BAT, the burst was a single spike 0.10 +/- 0.02 seconds long.

The time-averaged spectrum from T+0.2 to T+0.3 sec is best fit by a simple
power-law model.  The best-fit photon index is 0.60 +/- 0.3.  The total
fluence in the 15-150 keV band was (1.7 +/- 0.4) x 10^-7 ergs/cm^2.  The
errors quoted are at the 68% confidence level.

GCN Circular 13695

Subject
GRB 120817B - PTF Observations
Date
2012-08-21T05:13:04Z (13 years ago)
From
S. Bradley Cenko at Caltech <cenko@srl.caltech.edu>
S. B. Cenko (UC Berkeley), E. O. Ofek (Weizmann Institute) and D. B.
Fox (Penn State) report on behalf of a larger collaboration:

We have imaged the field of the IPN short-hard GRB120817B (Golenetskii et
al., GCN 13670) with the Palomar 48 inch Oschin telescope (P48) as part of
the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF).  Images were obtained in the Mould R
filter on 2012 Aug 19.4 and 20.4 UT.

Inside the error localization derived from ground-based analysis of the
Swift BAT (Cummings et al., GCN 13692), we find no new sources when
compared with Digitized Sky Survey images of the field on either night.
Digitally subtracting coadded frames from the two nights, we find no
fading sources within the field to a limiting magnitude of R > 20.5
(calibrated with respect to field stars from the USNO-B1 catalog).

Finally, we note that the error circle does not appear to contain any
bright, resolved (i.e. nearby) galaxies.  No known galaxies are listed in
the NASA Extragalactic Database within 5 arcmin of the center of the Swift
BAT localization.

[GCN OPS NOTE(22aug12):  Per author's request, "120718B" in the Subject-line
was changed to "120817B".]

GCN Circular 13700

Subject
GRB 120817B: Deep limit on the optical afterglow from du Pont and Magellan observations
Date
2012-08-22T18:26:16Z (13 years ago)
From
Wen-fai Fong at CFA <wfong@cfa.harvard.edu>
W. Fong, E. Berger (Harvard), D. Kelson, R. Williams (Carnegie) report:

"We re-observed the BAT-refined location of the IPN short-duration GRB
120817B (GCNs 13670, 13692) with the Inamori-Magellan Areal Camera and
Spectrograph (IMACS) mounted on the Magellan/Baade 6.5-m telescope starting
on 2012 Aug 21.410 UT, 4.2 days post-burst and 3.3 days after our initial
LCO/WFCCD observations (GCN 13672).  We obtained 2x300-sec exposures in
R-band in 0.92" seeing.  Digital image subtraction with our first
observations using the ISIS software package reveals no evidence for a
fading optical source in or around the BAT error circle.  Calculating the
zeropoint using a Stetson standard star field at the same airmass, we place
a 3-sigma limit of R(Vega)>23.3 mag on the optical afterglow of GRB 120817B
at 23.7 hours after the burst."

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