GRB 230906A
GCN Circular 34704
Subject
GRB 230906A: optical counterpart
Date
2023-09-15T21:21:52Z (2 years ago)
From
corinna.pena@utah.edu
Via
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C. Peña (Univ. of Utah), D. B. Malesani (Radboud univ. and DAWN/NBI), A. Rossi (INAF), A. J. Levan (Radboud univ.), and G. Pugliese (API, Amsterdam), report on behalf of the Stargate collaboration:
Following the Chandra X-ray localization (O’Connor et al., GCN 34672) of the Fermi/GBM short GRB 230906A (Fermi GBM team, GCN 34631; Frederiks et al., GCN 34638), we observed the GRB afterglow with the ESO Very Large Telescope equipped with the HAWK-I near infrared camera and with the FORS2 optical camera. Observations in the HAWK-I Ks band consisted in 30 minute exposure with a mean time of 6.84 days after the GRB. Observations in the FORS2 R band consisted in 40 minute exposure with a mean time of 6.76 days after the GRB. Sky conditions were modest, with a delivered seeing of ~2" in the R band.
Consistent with the position of the X-ray afterglow discovered by Chandra (O’Connor et al., GCN 34672), we detect a weak source in the stacked R-band image, at J2000 coordinates (~0.5" error):
RA = 05:19:01.57
Dec = -47:53:32.3
We measure for this source an AB magnitude R = 25.44 ± 0.25, calibrated against nearby SkyMapper stars. In the Ks band, we can only set an upper limit with AB magnitude > 23.3. As noted by O’Connor et al. (GCN 34672), there is no detected host galaxy in the Legacy Survey, which has however a depth shallower than our measurement.
While the spatial association with the X-ray counterpart suggests a physical connection with the GRB, it is unclear whether the source is dominated by transient light or is a faint host galaxy. We note that the R-K color is not as red as was AT 2017gfo at a comparable epoch after explosion (e.g. Villar et al. 2017, ApJ, 851, L21).
We acknowledge the support of the observing staff at Paranal, in particular Ana Escorza, Linda Schmidtobreick, and Fuyan Bian.
GCN Circular 34672
Subject
GRB 230906A: Chandra detection of the X-ray afterglow
Date
2023-09-11T23:51:20Z (2 years ago)
From
Brendan O'Connor at CMU <oconnorb@umd.edu>
Via
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B. O'Connor (CMU), S. Dichiara (PSU), E. Troja (UTV), report on behalf of a larger collaboration:
We carried out a Chandra Target of Opportunity (ToO) observation of the IPN localized short GRB 230906A (Fermi GBM team, GCN 34631; Kozyrev et al., GCN 34637) under program 24500202 (PI: S. Dichiara). We used the ACIS-S camera with a total exposure of 19.8 ks beginning on 2023-09-11 04:58:29 UT, corresponding to ~4.7 days after the initial trigger.
At the location of the Swift XRT candidate afterglow (Beardmore et al., GCN 34639) uncovered during tiled observations of the IPN localization (Evans et al., GCN 34636), we detect a clear X-ray source at the North-East edge of the XRT localization. The source is located at
RA, DEC = 05:19:01.52, -47:53:32.66
with an uncertainty of 0.8" (systematic + statistical). The source shows signs of fading compared to previous XRT observations. We note that there is no obvious host galaxy at this location in the Legacy Survey, although multiple sources exist within a few arcseconds.
We would like to thank Patrick Slane, Harvey Tananbaum, Dan Schwartz, Jack Steiner, Brad Wargelin, and the entire CXO staff for rapidly approving and planning this observation.
GCN Circular 34651
Subject
GRB 230906A: BlackGEM upper limits
Date
2023-09-10T15:28:47Z (2 years ago)
From
Simon de Wet at University of Cape Town <simdewet@gmail.com>
Via
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S. de Wet (UCT), D. Pieterse (Radboud), P.J. Groot (Radboud/UCT/SAAO) and P.M. Vreeswijk (Radboud) report on behalf of the BlackGEM consortium:
Following the IPN localisation of the short GRB 230906A (Fermi GBM team, GCN 34631) by the Interplanetary Network (Kozyrev et al., GCN 34637), the BlackGEM Unit Telescope 3 (BG3-Opal) located at ESO La Silla, Chile, obtained 2 x 300 s exposures in the q-band (440-720 nm) of the IPN triangulation region. The first observation started at 08:00:42 UT on 2023 September 7, 19.1 hours after the Fermi GBM trigger.
We detect no new transients within the IPN triangulation error region nor at the position of the Swift XRT source (Beardmore et al., GCN 34639) down to a 5-sigma limiting AB magnitude of q=21.53, consistent with the upper limits reported by Swift/UVOT (Oates and Moss, GCN 34643). The depth of our images was negatively affected by ~3 arcsecond seeing.
BlackGEM is an array of wide-field telescopes designed, built and operated by a consortium consisting of Radboud University, the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy NOVA, KU Leuven, the University of Manchester, Tel Aviv University, the Weizmann Institute, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Potsdam, Texas Tech University, the University of California at Davis, the Danish Technical University and the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium.
GCN Circular 34649
Subject
GRB 230906A: AstroSat CZTI detection
Date
2023-09-10T05:39:19Z (2 years ago)
From
Gaurav Waratkar at IIT Bombay <gauravwaratkar@iitb.ac.in>
Via
Web form
P. K. Navaneeth (IUCAA), G. Waratkar (IITB), A. Vibhute (IUCAA), V. Bhalerao (IITB), D. Bhattacharya (Ashoka University/IUCAA), A. R. Rao (IUCAA/TIFR), and S. Vadawale (PRL) report on behalf of the AstroSat CZTI collaboration:
Analysis of AstroSat CZTI data with the CIFT framework (Sharma et al., 2021, JApA, 42, 73) showed the detection of the short GRB 230906A which was also detected by Fermi (Fermi GBM team, GCN Circ. 34631