Skip to main content
Testing. You are viewing the public testing version of GCN. For the production version, go to https://gcn.nasa.gov.
Announcing GCN Classic Migration Survey, End of Legacy Circulars Email. See news and announcements

GCN Circular 4962

Subject
SGR 1900+14: Swift detection of an outburst
Date
2006-04-14T05:06:39Z (19 years ago)
From
Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC <Scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov>
A. D. Falcone (PSU), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC), S. D. Hunsberger (PSU)
and D. M. Palmer (LANL) report on behalf of the Swift Team:

At 04:35:28 UT 14 Apr 06, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT)
triggered and located an outburst from SGR 1900+14 (trigger=205164). 
Swift slewed immediately to the burst. The BAT on-board calculated
location is RA,Dec 286.799, +9.322 {19h 07m 12s, +09d 19' 19"}
(J2000) with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment,
including  systematic uncertainty), 37 arcseconds from the known
source location.  The BAT light curve shows a single spike with a
duration less than 256 msec. The peak count rate was ~3000 counts/sec
(15-350 keV), at ~0 sec after the trigger. This is the third burst of
comparable size from this source in the past three days. 

The XRT began taking data at 04:36:17 UT, 49 seconds after the BAT
trigger. The XRT on-board centroid algorithm did not find a source in
the image and no prompt position is available. However, from the
initial light curve, it appears that XRT did detect photons from the
outburst. 

UVOT took a finding chart exposure of 100 seconds with the White
(160-650 nm) filter starting 53 seconds after the BAT trigger. No
afterglow candidate has been found in the initial data products. The
2.7'x2.7' sub-image covers 25% of the BAT error circle. The typical
3-sigma upper limit has been about 18.5 mag. The 8'x8' region for the
list of sources generated on-board covers the known position of SGR1900+14. 
 The list of sources is typically complete to about 18 mag. No
correction has been made for the large, but uncertain extinction
expected.
Looking for U.S. government information and services? Visit USA.gov