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GCN Circular 7143

Subject

GRB 071208?: Swift detection of a possible burst

Date

2007-12-08T12:55:02Z (17 years ago)

From

Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC <scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov>

S. R. Oates (UCL-MSSL), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC),
W. H. Baumgartner (GSFC/UMBC), A. P. Beardmore (U Leicester),
D. N. Burrows (PSU), S. T. Holland (CRESST/USRA/GSFC),
J. A. Kennea (PSU), K. L. Page (U Leicester), D. M. Palmer (LANL),
A. M. Parsons (GSFC) and T. N. Ukwatta (GSFC/GWU) report on behalf of
the Swift Team:

At 12:28:14 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and
located a possible GRB 071208 (trigger=298308).  Swift did not slew because
of the Sun observing constraint. 
The BAT on-board calculated location is 
RA, Dec 266.112, +7.535 which is 
   RA(J2000)  =  17h 44m 27s
   Dec(J2000) = +07d 32' 05"
with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including 
systematic uncertainty).  The BAT light curve shows a very weak bump riding
on top of a background grazing the SAA.  At this time we can not determine
whether this is a noise fluctuation in the image domain or a burst.  We need 
to wait for the full data set to be downlinked to make that determination. 

This position is moving deeper into the Sun observing constraint, 
so the XRT and UVOT will be unable to observe for a number of weeks. 

Burst Advocate for this burst is S. R. Oates (sro AT mssl.ucl.ac.uk). 
Please contact the BA by email if you require additional information
regarding Swift followup of this burst. In extremely urgent cases, after
trying the Burst Advocate, you can contact the Swift PI by phone (see
Swift TOO web site for information: http://www.swift.psu.edu/too.html.)