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GCN Circular 5162

Subject
GRB 060526: Swift detection of a burst with x-ray and optical afterglow
Date
2006-05-26T16:45:41Z (18 years ago)
From
Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC <Scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov>
S. Campana (INAF-OAB), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC), P. T. Boyd (NASA/GSFC),
P. J. Brown (PSU), D. N. Burrows (PSU), J. R. Cummings (NASA/ORAU),
C. G. Guidorzi (Univ Bicocca&OAB), S. T. Holland (GSFC/USRA),
J. A. Kennea (PSU), C. B. Markwardt (GSFC/UMD),
F. E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), A. Moretti (INAF-OAB),
K. L. Page (U Leicester), M. Stamatikos (NASA/ORAU),
G. Tagliaferri (INAF-OAB) and D. E. Vanden Berk (PSU) report on
behalf of the Swift Team:

At 16:28:30 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and
located GRB 060526 (trigger=211957).  Swift slewed immediately to the burst. 
The BAT on-board calculated location is RA,Dec 232.845, +0.244
{15h 31m 23s, +00d 14' 39"} (J2000) with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin
(radius, 90% containment, including  systematic uncertainty). 
The BAT light curve shows multiple peaks starting at T-3 sec out to
T+15 sec.  The peak count rate was ~2600 counts/sec (15-350 keV),
at ~1 sec after the trigger. 

The XRT began observing the field at 16:29:43 UT, 73 seconds after the
BAT trigger. XRT found an uncatalogued X-ray source  located at
RA(J2000) = 15h 31m 18.4s, Dec(J2000) = +00d 17' 11.0", with an
estimated uncertainty of 6.8 arcseconds (90% confidence radius). This
location is 166 arcseconds from the BAT on-board position, within the
BAT error circle. The initial flux in the 2.5s image was 3.6e-10
erg/cm2/s (0.2-10 keV). 

UVOT took a finding chart exposure of 100 seconds with the White
(160-650 nm) filter starting 81 seconds after the BAT trigger. There
is a candidate afterglow in the rapidly available 2.7'x2.7' sub-image
at (RA,DEC) (J2000) of (232.8265,0.2847) or
(15h31m18.36s,+00o17'04.9")  with a 1-sigma error radius of about 0.5
arc sec. This position is 6.2 arc sec. from the center of the XRT
error circle. The estimated magnitude is 17.6 with a 1-sigma error of
about 0.5 mag. No correction has been made for the expected extinction
corresponding to E(B-V) of  0.07.
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