TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER: 612
SUBJECT: GRB 000313 - optical transient in BATSE error box
DATE: 00/03/15 03:30:00 GMT
FROM: Alberto Castro-Tirado at LAEFF-INTA
Alberto Castro-Tirado, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and IAA-CSIC (Granada)
Jan Soldan and Rene Hudec, ASU (Ondrejov)
Petr Pata and Martin Bernas, CVUT-FEL (Prague)
Javier Gorosabel, DSRI (Copenhagen)
José María Castro Cerón, ROA (San Fernando)
Tomas Mateo Sanguino, INTA-CEDEA (Huelva)
Antonio de Ugarte, UCM (Madrid)
Jose Angel Berna, UA (Alicante)
on behalf of the larger BOOTES-1 Team
Arne Henden, USRA/USNO (Flagstaff)
report:
F. Vrba, B. Canzian, H. Harris, USNO (Flagstaff)
Xavier Delfosse, IAC (Tenerife)
and Scott Barthelmy, NASA-GSFC (Greenbelt)
"We have obtained several images centred at the BATSE ORIGINAL error box
for the rather faint burst GRB 000313 (BATSE trigger 8035) with the wide-
field CCD of
BOOTES-1 on Mar 13.8868 UT (4-min after the GRB, 5-min exposure
time in the I-band) and with the narrow-field CCD attached to the
0.3-m telescope on Mar 14.0847 UT (4.8-h after the event, 10-min
exposure time, no filter). Limiting magnitudes of the images are about
13 and 18 respectively. The first frame reveals a bright new source
of about 10th mag when comparing with the following images obtained
starting 55-min later. This point-like object, with the same PSF than
other field stars, is not detected in the rest of BOOTES-1 images taken
during the night. The position of this optical transient is
AR(2000) = 13h50m07.9s, Dec(2000) =+31 16 49 (+/- 3").
Unfortunately no more frames were obtained at the same position in the time
interval 9-min < T < 55-min due to a mosaizing around the field. Further
images were acquired at the 1.0-m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on March
14.169-14.200 UT (BVRI bands) and at the 1.3-m and 1.55-m USNO telescopes
on March 14.216-14.261 UT (R- and I-bands) but no object is detected
within the OT error box down to a limiting magnitude of I = 21.
Although we cannot exclude at this moment that this object could be
due to a satellite glint or to an airplane flash, multiwavelength
observations (specially radio and deep optical) are encouraged in order
to see whether this could be the optical afterglow to GRB 000313".