Skip to main content
Testing. You are viewing the public testing version of GCN. For the production version, go to https://gcn.nasa.gov.
New! Circulars over Kafka, Heartbeat Topic, and Schema v4.1.0. See news and announcements

GCN Circular 6114

Subject
GRB 070220: Swift detection of a burst
Date
2007-02-20T05:05:13Z (18 years ago)
From
Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC <scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov>
M. Stamatikos (NASA/ORAU), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC),
A. P. Beardmore (U Leicester), D. N. Burrows (PSU),
N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC), S. Immler (GSFC/USRA), J. A. Kennea (PSU),
F. E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), C. Pagani (PSU),
K. L. Page (U Leicester), D. M. Palmer (LANL),
T. Sakamoto (NASA/ORAU), P. Schady (MSSL-UCL) and
D. E. Vanden Berk (PSU) report on behalf of the Swift Team:

At 04:44:33 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and
located GRB 070220 (trigger=261299).  Swift slewed immediately to the burst. 
The BAT on-board calculated location is 
RA, Dec 34.819, +68.818 which is 
   RA(J2000)  = +02h 19m 17s
   Dec(J2000) = +68d 49' 06"
with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including 
systematic uncertainty).  The BAT light curve shows multiple peaks
with a duration of about 60 sec.  The peak count rate
was ~7000 counts/sec (15-350 keV), at ~15 sec after the trigger. 

The XRT began observing the field at 04:45:51 UT, 79 seconds after the
BAT trigger. XRT found a bright, fading, uncatalogued X-ray source
located at RA, Dec 34.7765, +68.8052 which is
   RA(J2000)  =  02h 19m 06.3s
   Dec(J2000) =  68d 48' 18.7"
with an uncertainty of 4.7 arcseconds (radius, 90% containment). 
This location is 72 arcseconds from the BAT on-board position,
within the BAT error circle. The initial flux in the 2.5s image
was 4.5e-09 erg/cm2/s (0.2-10 keV). 

UVOT took a finding chart exposure of 100 seconds with the White
(160-650 nm) filter starting 88 seconds after the BAT trigger. No
afterglow candidate has been found in the initial data products. The
2.7'x2.7' sub-image covers 100% of the XRT error circle. The 3-sigma
upper limit in a 100s white band exposure is 19.6 mag. The 8'x8'
region for the list of sources generated on-board covers 100% of the
XRT error circle. The list of sources is typically complete to about
18 mag. No correction has been made for the expected extinction
corresponding to E(B-V) of 0.90.
Looking for U.S. government information and services? Visit USA.gov