GCN Circular 8124

N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC), J. Mao (INAF-OAB), D. M. Palmer (LANL),
M. Perri (ASDC), B. Preger (ASDC), G. Stratta (ASDC) and
L. Vetere (PSU) report on behalf of the Swift Team:

At 11:27:35 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered on
a large flare from the newly discovered SGR 0501+4516 (trigger=321551). 
Swift was already observing this source location due to a previous
trigger on this source. 
The BAT on-board calculated location is 
RA, Dec 75.265, +45.281 which is 
   RA(J2000) = 05h 01m 04s
   Dec(J2000) = +45d 16' 52"
with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including 
systematic uncertainty).  The BAT light curve showed a roughly 
flat-topped structure with a duration of about 0.256 sec. 
The peak count rate was ~300k counts/sec (15-350 keV), 
at ~0.2 sec after the trigger. 

The BAT burst response algorithm causes a TDRSS alert only
when a known source exceeds twice its previous fluence, so
additional large flares may have occurred since the 
previously-reported large flare at 4:47:48 UT.  Ground
processing of Malindi data will be required to report
on other activity by this source. 

[GCN OPS NOTE(25aug08): Per author's request, the end of the
second sentence was changed from "...due to its previous." to
"...due to a previous trigger on this source.".]